Pretoria – Think twice before adding more salt to your pop corn or slap chips – you may be risking your health.
With the marking of World Salt Awareness Week this week, South Africans are being asked to consider what they are putting into their mouths and the impact it will have on their health.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa launched a new lobby group, Salt Watch, to alert South Africans to the fact that too much salt could be killing them.
The group includes experts in the field of salt reduction from the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA), the Nutrition Society of South Africa (NNSA) and the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa. Salt Watch is set to launch a major national awareness campaign to help reduce population salt intake. South Africa has one of the highest rates of hypertension worldwide.
“Evidence has shown that regularly eating too much salt puts us at increased risk of developing high blood pressure, which is the main cause of strokes and a major cause of heart attacks and heart failures,” according to Irene Labuschagne, a dietitian at the Nutritional Information Centre of Stellenbosch University (NICUS).
According to Labuschagne, 31.8 percent of South Africans have high blood pressure. “Food regulation is not enough to reduce South Africans’ salt intake and educating the public is crucial to the success of salt reduction,” she added.
The main source of sodium is table salt, which helps to regulate the body’s fluid balance, but the amount people eat is far more than that required.
The World Health Organisation recommends that adults eat less than 5g of salt (a teaspoon) a day. A reduction of salt intake by just 2g a day will reduce your risk of cardiovascular events by 20 percent.
Internationally accepted guidelines state that any food with more than 600mg of sodium per 100g can be considered unhealthy. In South Africa, many products exceed this limit.
This has prompted the Department of Health to investigate taking a legislative route towards lowering the salt content in foods.
This step will give food manufacturers until June next year to comply with the first set of salt guidelines.
Foods don’t necessarily have to taste salty to be salty. It is often already in the foods we buy and we can’t take it out. Most of the salt in our diet, up to 60 percent, is found in processed foods. Bread is a serious concern as it is very high in salt.
Other culprits are margarine, butter spreads, stock cubes, soup powders, breakfast cereals and savoury snacks. The remaining 40 percent is added at the table.
Read food labels and the ingredients list. If sodium or salt is listed in the first three ingredients, the food is likely to be a high-salt choice.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that fancier types of salt are better for you. Whether it’s pink, black, rock, crystal or flakes, they still have the same effect on your blood pressure as standard table salt.