ABSTRACT
Increased sodium intake is associated in a graded manner with several detrimental health outcomes, particularly high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, with approximately two million deaths attributable to a high salt intake globally. Very few people have a healthy salt intake of no more than two grams of sodium (five grams of salt) per day, which is the WHO target. This chapter describes methods to assess salt intake, the relationship of salt intake with health outcomes, the sources of dietary salt intake and the priority interventions to reduce salt intake in populations, including the related WHO best buys. The chapter also highlights the importance of food reformulation to reduce salt content in processed foods, global benchmarks for sodium levels in foods, the role of front-of-pack food labelling, the need for a supportive environment to enable a lower dietary salt intake, as well as surveillance mechanisms and targets for monitoring the salt content of selected foods and the dietary salt intake in the population, which are components of the WHO SHAKE technical package.
