Against the grain: How can China kick its deadly salt habit?
thousands of years. But consuming lots of salt raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attack and stroke, now accounts for 40 per cent of deaths in China.To get more breaking news china, you can visit shine news official website.
It is well known that salt consumption in China is high, but accurate assessments are scarce. Public health experts need robust estimates of salt intake to help them develop strategies to reduce this intake. An example of a promising strategy is replacing regular salt with potassium salt, which contains less sodium (which raises blood pressure) and more potassium (which lowers blood pressure).
The most accurate way to measure salt intake is to measure the sodium excreted in urine over a 24-hour period. Although this data was collected in China, it has never been comprehensively reviewed. Our latest review, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, aimed to plug this knowledge gap.
Searching both English and Chinese-language databases for all studies ever published that reported 24-hour urinary excretion of either sodium or potassium in China, we found 70 with sodium data (drawn from 26,767 participants), of which 59 also reported potassium data (drawn from 24,738 participants). The data covered four decades and most provinces of China.
Of all the reviews of salt intake in China, our review is the first to be systematic and is by far the largest.Our meta-analysis of the combined data revealed important patterns in salt and potassium consumption in China. We found, for example, that on average children and adolescents exceed the salt-intake limit set for adults.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends adults consume less than 5g of salt per day, and this upper limit should be reduced for children and adolescents according to their energy requirements. In China, however, children aged three to six, on average, consume 5g of salt per day. The WHO recommendation was far exceeded by children and adolescents aged six to 16 years. Their intake averaged a worrying 8.7g per day.
In adults, the average salt intake was 10.9g per day, which is more than twice the maximum recommendation set by the WHO and one of the highest salt intakes in the world.Our review also showed geographical differences between northern and southern China. Salt intake in northern China has declined over the past four decades, which may be the result of the government’s efforts to increase salt awareness and of improvements in the year-round availability of fresh produce. Yet, despite this decline, the average salt intake in northern Chinese adults remains high, at 11.2g per day.