The lat­est re­search shows that al­most every­one needs to hold the salt.

It's a crit­i­cal flavour en­hancer for so many foods, and in cen­turies past, it was nec­es­sary for pre­serv­ing per­ish­ables be­fore the ad­vent of re­frig­er­a­tors. But salt, alas, is one of the many fac­tors plagu­ing Amer­i­can health.

The Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion (AHA) links too much salt in the di­et to a high­er risk for heart dis­ease, hy­per­ten­sion and stroke, and ac­cord­ing to re­search pre­sent­ed last week at the AHA's 2013 Sci­en­tif­ic Ses­sions, ex­ces­sive salt led to near­ly 2.3 mil­lion heart-re­lat­ed deaths world­wide in 2010.

The re­searchers analysed 247 sur­veys of adults par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2010 Glob­al Bur­den of Dis­ease Sur­vey, which is a col­lab­o­ra­tive study in­volv­ing re­searchers from 50 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

The par­tic­i­pants re­port­ed on their sodi­um in­take from 1990 to 2010 in food ques­tion­naires. Over­all, adults around the world ate an av­er­age of 4,000 mg of sodi­um a day, ei­ther from pre­pared foods or from ta­ble salt, soy sauce or ad­di­tion­al salt sprin­kled in­to meals while cook­ing.

That's twice the amount rec­om­mend­ed by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (2,000 mg per day) and near­ly three times the amount the AHA says is healthy (1,500 mg per day).

Of the 187 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed in the sur­veys, 181, home to 99 per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion, ex­ceed­ed the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion's salt lim­it; on­ly Kenya ad­hered to the AHA's rec­om­men­da­tion.

To em­pha­size the con­tri­bu­tion that high sodi­um in­take can have on health, the re­searchers then con­duct­ed a meta-analy­sis of 107 tri­als that mea­sured the re­la­tion­ship be­tween par­tic­i­pants' salt con­sump­tion and blood pres­sure and heart-dis­ease risk.

Among peo­ple dy­ing from heart at­tacks, strokes or oth­er heart-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders, 40 per cent were pre­ma­ture and oc­curred in peo­ple 69 and younger. Ex­ces­sive salt in­take–de­fined as any­thing above 1,000 mg per day–was linked to 84 per cent of the deaths, and the ma­jor­i­ty oc­curred in low-and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.

Out of the 30 largest coun­tries in the world, the US ranked 19th, with 429 deaths per mil­lion adults due to ex­ces­sive salt con­sump­tion.

The Salt In­sti­tute crit­i­cised the study, not­ing that the added heart-dis­ease risk was com­pared with an un­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly low lev­el of salt con­sump­tion that no coun­try in the world met.

"This lat­est AHA sta­tis­ti­cal study on the world­wide mor­tal­i­ty from di­etary salt is mis­lead­ing and to­tal­ly de­void of gen­uine ev­i­dence," said Mor­ton Satin, vice pres­i­dent of sci­ence and re­search for the Salt In­sti­tute, in a state­ment. "Us­ing a high­ly flawed sta­tis­ti­cal mod­el, re­searchers sim­ply pro­ject­ed po­ten­tial re­duc­tions in mor­tal­i­ty with­out con­sid­er­ing all known health risks re­sult­ing from low salt in­take."

Still, adults are not the on­ly ones at risk. In oth­er re­search pre­sent­ed at the AHA meet­ing, sci­en­tists re­port­ed that chil­dren are al­ready eat­ing too much salt as well.

The high sodi­um con­tent in prepack­aged meals and snacks tar­get­ed at kids is push­ing them to eat un­healthy amounts. About 75 per cent of prepack­aged meals are high in sodi­um, ac­cord­ing to da­ta that analysed the salt con­tent in 1,115 prod­ucts for ba­bies and tod­dlers.

In the analy­sis, the re­searchers de­fined "high in sodi­um" as con­tain­ing over 210 mg per serv­ing, and they found that some tod­dler meals con­tained up to 630 mg of sodi­um per serv­ing.

"Our con­cern is the pos­si­ble long-term health risks of in­tro­duc­ing high lev­els of sodi­um in a child's di­et, be­cause high blood pres­sure, as well as a pref­er­ence for salty foods, may de­vel­op ear­ly in life.

"The less sodi­um in an in­fant's or tod­dler's di­et, the less he or she may want it when old­er," said lead au­thor Joyce Maalouf, a fel­low at the Na­tion­al Cen­ter for Chron­ic Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Health Pro­mo­tion at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion in At­lanta, in a state­ment.

And the AHA says it's worth re­mem­ber­ing that salt doesn't just come in the shak­er on the ta­ble. Be­cause it's hid­den in so many prepack­aged and pre­pared foods, it's im­por­tant to read la­bels and nu­tri­tion­al in­for­ma­tion for things you don't make your­self. And when cook­ing, keep salt to a min­i­mum and try sub­sti­tut­ing with oth­er flavours, like the sour­ness of lemon juice, to trick your taste buds in­to think­ing they're get­ting salt. (Time.com)

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