If Americans lowered their sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams a day, the result would be 11 million fewer cases of high blood pressure and health care savings of about $18 billion a year, according to a study sponsored by the RAND Corporation and published in the American Journal of Health Promotion [September/October, 2009]. Lowering sodium intake even more could result in greater savings, the authors concluded.
Most experts agree that such a goal could never be reached without reductions in the amount of salt used in processed and prepared foods, an action that manufacturers have generally resisted. The American Heart Association would like manufacturers and restaurants to reduce added salt in foods by 50 percent over the next decade.
[SOURCE: “Sodium, salt, and you,” Harvard Women’s Health Watch, November, 2009]