Reducing Dietary Salt May Save Hundreds of Lives

The Los Angeles Times  (2/12, Healy) "Booster Shots" blog reports that a new study published Tuesday in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension found that "steadily reducing sodium in the foods we buy and eat could save a half-million Americans from dying premature deaths over a decade." An immediate 40% reduction in salt intake could also increase the amount of lives saved this decade to 850,000. The estimates come from three separate teams from the University of California-San Francisco, Harvard University's School of Public Health, and Canada's Simon Fraser University "crunching the numbers" and reaching "estimates independently." Americans consume over 3,600 milligrams of sodium daily, and the teams agreed if this were to be reduced to 1,500, "as many as 1.2 million premature deaths could be averted over the course of a decade."

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