People love salt, whether it’s in pickled products, sausage, ramen or soup. Yet too much salt intake causes health problems and we are eating an excessive amount of salt.
The daily recommended salt allowance of the World Health Organization is a tea spoon of salt. However, Korean people eat more than two spoons of salt a day.
There are a lot of health problems that can occur by eating an excessive amount of salt. It is easy to intake too many calories by eating salty foods. So, the blood pressure of kids and teenagers can get high and they may become fat. Adults may suffer cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease or stomach cancer. Excessive amount of salt intake could even disturb water absorption and cause diarrhea.
Many actions are being taken to prevent people from being addicted to salt. For example, following the spread of a new eating trend of eating bland foods, many high demand products are coming to markets containing less salt than usual. Also, many company cafeterias are executing “No Soup” campaigns, as soup is typically high-sodium. Recently, the British government ordered restaurants and food companies to reduce salt use for the public’s health.
A recent article in the Korea Herald showed that according to researchers, salt intake reduction could save more than 280,000 to 500,000 people over 10 years. Researchers concluded that reducing the amount of salt intake could help maintain our cardiovascular health and blood pressure.
How about cutting salt from your supper today?
