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Salt Reduction: What Happens When You Comsume to Much Sodium?

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Based on a ubiquitous biologic principle, there is a physiologic, healthy consumption range for all essential nutrients to maintain an optimum health status. Eaton and Konner (1985) had highlighted in their study that there is an optimum characteristic and composition of food that every organism, including human, is genetically registered to consume and metabolize. Likewise, sodium as one of the key fundamental nutrients is no exception to this rule (Karppanen and Mervaala, 2006). Therefore, if sodium consumption is less than the physiologic range for extended periods, adverse deficiency circumstances are likely to develop. On the contrary, if consumption of sodium surpasses the physiologic range for prolonged periods, detrimental …show more content…

(2013) using a series of cross sectional surveys of the salt content in UK packaged bread, it was discovered that bread has been the largest contributor of salt to the UK diet. This research was done by investigating the reductions implemented over a period of time and the developments, which had been achieved towards lowering levels of salt in bread by meeting the 1g/100g target. Nevertheless, the mean daily salt consumption of populations in Europe range from approximately 8 to 11g salt/day and this amount are well surpassing the recommended intake of dietary needs, i.e. approximately 3 to 4g salt/day in adults (EFSA, 2005). Current EU legislation has lay down a benchmark, allowing products which have salt levels below 0.3% to be labeled as “low salt” and allow claims related to sodium intake and heart health to be made (Commission of the European Communities, 2003). In addition, the Food Standard Agency (FSA) has also establish a series of gradual reduction in salt levels for over 80 categories of food (FSA, 2006), which have now been incorporated as part of the Government’s Public Health Responsibility Deal Salt Pledge (Department of Health Responsibility, 2012) in order to reduce salt intake to a predictable target of 6g/day in adults.

In various extensive study conducted over time, several effects of sodium on the humans have been described and there is strong evidence that a high salt intake elevates blood pressure and thereby increases the risk of

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