Potato Chips Help Drive Up Salt Intake for Most American Adults

Nine of every 10 adults in the U.S. consume too much sodium from eating pizza, potato chips and other foods made with salt, raising the annual death toll from heart attacks and strokes, according to a federal report.

A study covering 3,922 adults found that just 9.6 percent held their daily sodium intake below the maximum amount specified by federal guidelines, researchers said today in the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. New cases of heart disease could be reduced by as many as 120,000 a year, and stroke by as many as 66,000, if all adults reduced sodium consumption by about half a teaspoon a day, according to the report.

“Sodium has become so pervasive in our food supply that it’s difficult for the vast majority of Americans to stay within recommended limits,” said Janelle Peralez Gunn, the lead author of the article and a public-health analyst at the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public-health professionals, food processors, retailers and doctors all should take measures to get people to consume less sodium, Gunn said in a statement, adding to growing public discussion of dietary salt. In April, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science’s health arm, urged a “new, coordinated approach” to reduce sodium in food.

Kraft Effort

Also in April, 16 companies, including Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft Foods Inc., said they would reduce salt by 25 percent in some products by 2014 in a program created by cities and medical groups.

An estimated 77 percent of salt intake comes from processed and restaurant food, such as bread and grains, including products that may not taste salty, according to today’s report from the CDC.

The U.S.-recommended maximum quantity for an adult’s daily sodium consumption is 1,500 to 2,300 milligrams a day, depending on a person’s age, race or health. One teaspoon of salt equals about 2,300 milligrams. Seventy percent of the people in the study had a recommended maximum intake of 1,500 milligrams a day. For those people, intake averaged 3,366 milligrams, according to the report.

Sodium raises blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes, according to the Atlanta-based CDC. The Institute of Medicine estimated that reducing sodium intake could prevent 100,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Arielle Fridson in New York at afridson@bloomberg.net.

• Tweet
• More
  • Business Exchange
  • Buzz up!
  • Digg
• Print
• Email