Calls to end our salt habit and save lives

Do you have a sweet tooth or prefer salt?

The dangers of our love for sugar are well known. We are constantly being urged to quit sugar, there are regular calls for a sugar tax on processed foods and plenty of foods are promoted as sugar free, but salt flies under the radar a bit.

A new report from The Grattan Institute finds that consuming less salt in our diet could add 36,000 extra healthy years to our collective life spans, prevent 300 deaths a year and 6000 visits to hospital.

The Grattan Institute was blunt in its outlook.

Killer diet

“Australians have a killer diet,” the report found.

“We eat too much unhealthy food and too little healthy food. The rate of obesity has tripled since 1980. Diseases caused by, or made worse by, an unhealthy diet cost $10 billion a year in healthcare and are a leading cause of death.”

The Australian government has a program to cut salt in 27 food categories and saturated fat in five food categories.

Leading food suppliers involved in the program include Mars, Nestle, Sanitarium, Tip Top bakeries, Pepsi, Woolworths and Kraft.

According to government statistics, the program removed 78 tonnes of sodium (or almost 200 tonnes of table salt) and 470 tonnes of saturated fat from the food supply in the 2020-21 financial year.

Poorly implemented

However, The Grattan Institute doesn’t think the program goes far enough.

“Australia has had voluntary salt limits since 2009, but they are badly designed, poorly implemented, and have failed,” the report indicated.

“University of Melbourne modelling shows better limits could add 36,000 healthy years of life over the next 20 years, and prevent hundreds of deaths a year. Governments and the community would save money too.

“Governments would save $35 million a year in healthcare spending, and higher incomes would far outweigh tiny food price changes.”

The report claimed only 8 per cent of the salt Australians eat is covered by participating products and only 4 per cent of eligible products were reformulated to have a lower salt content.

Government intervention

The institute says the government should:

• make Australia’s existing voluntary salt limits mandatory, to be met by 2027
• add new, voluntary salt limits to cover more types of food, matching the breadth of the UK’s 2014 targets. They should be just as stringent, with compliance assessed in 2027. If there is no meaningful progress by 2027, these targets should be made mandatory, to be met by 2030
• close a loophole that exempts 20 per cent of products in each food category
• expand menu labelling for bakeries and fast-food restaurants to include salt.

The UK program to cut salt intake was highly successful. Between 2000 and 2014, the estimated daily salt intake for the UK population fell by almost 20 per cent, from 9.4 grams per day to 7.6 grams per day.

The institute also suggested promoting ‘healthier’ salt that has been enriched with potassium, starting with any salt used in schools and expanding it to bread and table salt.

The report said cutting salt in our diets could be a ‘quick win’ for Australia.

“Australians eat far too much salt. This raises our blood pressure, and condemns thousands of us to living with hypertension, heart disease, and the consequences of stroke,” the report said.

High salt intake

“More than 2500 Australians die each year from illnesses caused by high salt intake, more than double the national road toll in 2022.”

Before we go too far, you should never cut salt entirely out of your diet. Salt helps to maintain the correct volume of circulating blood and tissue fluids in the body. Unfortunately, Australians consume much more salt than they need.

According to BetterHealth, Australians consume about double the amount of sodium they need for good health.

Too much sodium can cause high blood pressure and many other health conditions including diabetes, stroke, kidney disease and obesity.

Do you think you eat too much salt? Would you be happy with the government forcing food producers to cut down on salt? Why not share your opinion in the comments section below?

Also read: Do you have a ‘salt’ tooth?