What if You Just Threw Away Those Salt-Shakers and Stopped Adding Extra Salt During Mealtimes?

Using not more than two teaspoons of salt a day is associated with increased healthspan and lifespan. Substituting normal salt with a potassium-enriched salt alternative is a quick hack to reduce sodium intake and has also been shown to reduce mortality and sickness.

Most of our foods are replete with sodium, often more than needed and it is quite difficult to figure out how much sodium is actually going into our bodies. It is also impractical and cumbersome to calculate the sodium contents of foods that we eat and then plan our meals accordingly.

One method that can help is to just not add extra salt during meals. Ma H and colleagues [1] studied 176,570 patients from the UK Biobank and found that those who had the least frequency of adding extra salt had lower risks of cardiovascular disease. While there are limitations to the study, because the frequency of adding salt was self-reported and the population studied was only from the United Kingdom, the results otherwise make sense and this practice can easily be added to our daily routines and lives.

So, what does this mean for you and I?

While we should make efforts to restrict our salt intake to less than two teaspoons a day and try and use a potassium substitute, preferably the 30% version, just not adding extra salt to our foods during mealtimes (excluding the salt used for cooking) can improve our healthspan and lifespan. So maybe it’s time to throw away the salt-shakers on our tables?

Footnotes

1. Ma H et al. Adding Salt to Foods and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022 Dec 6;80(23):2157-2167.

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