How muchsalt do you eat today? Probably no one will quantify it. The data indicatethat, the daily intake of salt in China is up to 12 g, equal to the one quarterof the weight of an egg, 2.4 times of the WHO standard. High-salt diets havebecome the important reasons that induce cardiovascular and cerebrovasculardiseases and hypertension. According to experts, decreasing the daily mean saltintake by 1 g for Chinese people can save 125,000 lives every year.

This week isthe eighth “World Reasonable Salt Use Publicity Week” carried out for “WorldAction On Salt and Health (WASH)”. The mission is to improve the health statusof people all over the world through gradually lowering the intake of tablesalt.

 “Mum, put less salt in the meals”. This is themost frequently-used nag given by Mr. Yao, a new graduate, who is working inBeijing, when chatting with his mother by telephone, and this is a reminder forthe increasingly old mother to pay attention to the health diets. Mr. Yao saysthat, “previously, my mother just estimated to put the salt in meals and onlywhen enough salt was put the meals could taste delicious.”

Actually,there are many people who cook by following the principle of “putting more saltto let the meals taste delicious”. The Health Channel of China News carried outinterviews and find that, many people takes excessive consumption of salt verylightly. Ms. Li, a Beijing citizen, describes her previous salt consumptionmethod of “putting a big amount of salt”. After two years’ engagement in thehealth industry, she has more profound knowledge on the significance ofreducing table salt, and then Ms. Li starts to constantly urge her parents aswell as relatives and friends to control the salt intake. Up to now, littleconsumption of table salt has become one of her life habits.

Professor WuYangfeng, Senior Researcher in George Health Institute of Peking UniversityHealth Science Center and Standing Deputy Director of Peking UniversityClinical Research Institute, claimed when interviewed by Chinanews, excessiveconsumption of table salt would lead to hypertension, and a series ofhypertension secondary diseases, such as cerebral stroke and heart diseases.

 “China has a vast population of cardiovascularand cerebrovascular disease patients and hypertension patients, and high-saltdiet is an important cause”. According to Wu Yangfeng, among every five deathcases in China, two of them are induced by cardiovascular and cerebrovasculardiseases. According to estimation, decreasing the daily mean salt intake by 1 gfor Chinese people can save 125,000 lives every year.

Wu Yangfenclaims that, according to the WHO recommended table salt standard of 5 g perday per capita, the status quo in China is 12 g, 2.4 times of the standard, andthe intake in North China is commonly higher than in South China. In someregions, such as Tibet, the salt intake can be a high as over 20 g.

Theinvestigation data of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention revealthat, from 2002 to 2012, the daily salt intake of China’s city dwellers droppedfrom 10.9 to 10.3 g, but the intake still exceeded the standard. We can seethat, salt reduction is a formidable and long task.

Reducing theconsumption of table salt is the world’s recognized preferential strategy forhypertensive disease prevention. As is known, because the table salt is mainlyfrom processed food in the developed countries, the government cooperates withthe food industry to reduce the salt content in processed foods. The measuresof promoting and improving the use of food labels and improving the cognitiondegree among the ordinary people are adopted to recommend healthy foods with alow content of salt, sugar and fat to the citizens and supply low saltsubstitutes to the market.

In 2012,China’s health departments formulated Working Plan for Prevention and Treatmentof China’s Chronic Diseases (2012 to 2015) and proposed the objective oflowering the daily salt intake to less than 9 g. In addition, it issued China’sfirst national standard of food nutritional labels - General Standard for theLabeling of Prepackaged Foods.

 “Out goal is still to reduce salt intake andeat bland diets.” Wu Yangfen suggests that, for people with hypertension, lowsalt substitutes be used to replace ordinary salt.

It is worthnoting that, the salt content of seasoning such as soy sauce and monosodiumglutamate is very high, and they should be less put in cooking. Wu Yangfeng warnsthat, citizens should ask the cookers to place less salt without monosodiumglutamate when eating out.

In additionto the seasoning of table salt, there are many salt-containing foods in dailylife, and it is very urgent to learn to avoid the intake of high-salt foods.High-salt foods refer to the foods with a salt content of 1.5 g/100 mg (or thesodium content is 0.6 g/ 100g), including various kinds of prepared food,salted vegetables, soy sauce pickles and instant noodles.

As for thepeople with a heavy taste, reducing salt cannot be realized in one step, itshould be done progressively, and people should slowly become adjusted to thebland diets. However, reducing the salt intake at any time can be efficacious.As for the blood pressure, if the salt content is reduced for one to severalweeks, the blood pressure will drop somewhat.

Source: http://www.jksb.com.cn/