Innovative and Collaborative Strategies to Reduce Population-Wide Sodium Intake
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Abstract
The World Health Organization promotes salt reduction as a best-buy strategy to reduce chronic diseases, and member states have agreed to a 30 % reduction target in mean population salt intake by 2025. This systematic literature review identified a number of innovative population-level strategies, including promotion of a substitute for table salt, provision of a salt spoon to lower the amount used in home cooking and social marketing and consumer awareness campaigns on salt and health. In high-income nations, engagement with the food industry to encourage reformulation of processed foods—whether through voluntary or mandatory approaches—is key to salt reduction. Legislation of salt content in foods, although not widely adopted, can create concrete incentives and disincentives to meet targets and does not rely on individuals to change their behaviour. The important role of advocacy and lobbying to change the food supply is undisputed.
Keywords
Salt reduction Population Policy Strategies Advocacy Blood pressure Systematic literature reviewNotes
Compliance with Ethics Guidelines
Conflict of Interest
Karen E. Charlton has received research support through grants from Pork CRC and Nutrafruit Pty Ltd, compensation from Pork CRC for serving as a programme submanager and from Nestlé for participation in a malnutrition advisory board and received a travel grant from Unilever South Africa to participate in the Salt Watch meeting in Johannesburg (2014).
Kelly Langford declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Jenny Kaldor declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent
This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.
References
Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance
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