Healthy Living: Reducing Your Salt In-take
By: KARK 4 News
Updated: February 12, 2013
It's one of those things we find in many of the foods we eat and sometimes we don't even know we're eating it.
Doctors say cutting the amount of salt in the American diet could save hundreds of millions of lives.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco project that gradually reducing sodium intake by 40-percent could save up to a half million lives over a 10-year period; that would be 2,200 milligrams a day.
They arrived at the numbers using three different computer models and simulations.
Even with the reduction, that's still more salt than the daily limit suggested by the American Heart Association, which is 1,500 milligrams.
The majority of dietary sodium comes from restaurants and processed food, but some major food manufacturers have begun the process of cutting salt in conjunction with a national sodium reduction effort, headed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Doctors say high sodium consumption raises the risk for high blood pressure, which raises the risk for serious complications like heart disease and stroke.
Doctors say cutting the amount of salt in the American diet could save hundreds of millions of lives.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco project that gradually reducing sodium intake by 40-percent could save up to a half million lives over a 10-year period; that would be 2,200 milligrams a day.
They arrived at the numbers using three different computer models and simulations.
Even with the reduction, that's still more salt than the daily limit suggested by the American Heart Association, which is 1,500 milligrams.
The majority of dietary sodium comes from restaurants and processed food, but some major food manufacturers have begun the process of cutting salt in conjunction with a national sodium reduction effort, headed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Doctors say high sodium consumption raises the risk for high blood pressure, which raises the risk for serious complications like heart disease and stroke.
