Less salty diets could save millions of lives

Paris

REDUCING salt intake worldwide by only 10 per cent could save millions of lives, a study reported on Wednesday. Government-led public service campaigns could massively cut mortality and disability caused by salt-triggered heart attacks and strokes for just over 10 US cents a year per person, researchers calculated.

Even without including healthcare savings, "we found that a government-supported, national policy to reduce population sodium intake by 10 per cent over 10 years would be cost effective", the authors concluded in the medical journal BMJ.