So how much salt should you eat? The World Health Organization recommends that adults should consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium, equivalent to 5 grams of salt per day (World Health Organization (WHO), 2013). The American Heart Association (AHA) even chose to recommend that we should eat less than 1,500 mg/day of sodium as of 2010 (AHA, 2014a). Table salt contains approximately 40% sodium by weight, so a 6 g serving (1 teaspoon) contains around 2,300 mg of sodium. This means that recommendations are to consume less than 1 teaspoon (WHO recommendations) or less than 2/3 of 1 teaspoon (AHA recommendations) of salt a day. As you may have guessed: many of us do not manage to meet this recommendation. In the USA, only 18.8% of adults consumed <2,300 mg/day of sodium, and only 5.5% ≤1,500 mg/day (DeHoon, 2010). This is most likely due to the high level of sodium in many processed foods, as well as the high level of sodium in restaurant foods (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2014). And consuming too much sodium can have a very negative effect on your health.
NYC decided in September of this year to make it mandatory for restaurants to mark dishes on their menus that exceeded the daily-recommended sodium intake (Durando, 2015). New York is the first U.S. city with such a requirement, as a reaction to the pressure by officials and experts to urge Americans to eat healthier increases (Peltz, 2015). This applies to all types of dishes, ranging from salads and sandwiches, to stews or pies. If a dish contains more than 2,300mg of sodium, restaurants now have to display a saltshaker-symbol next to it. The regulation will affect “an estimated 10% of menu items at the New York City outlets of chains with at least 15 outlets nationwide, and about 1/3 of the restaurant traffic in the city” ((Durando, 2015; Peltz, 2015). Hopefully, as a result, people will chose a dish that contains less salt, in order to make a healthier choice. However, consuming two dishes of medium salt levels, or simply consuming other dishes (breakfast, lunch, dinner) during the day that also contain salt can still cause people to consume too much salt, while unaware of the fact that they are doing so. Actually, some experts have urged the city to set the warning limit as low as 500 mg, in order to really increase awareness and the likelihood of people actually staying under the daily recommended amount (Peltz, 2015).
|NYC's sodium warning label. Source: sodium-warning-label-v2.jpg|
Maartje Mulders is a PhD Student at the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
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