Long term effects of advice to reduce dietary salt

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7382.222/a

BMJ 2003;326:222 ( 25 January )

Letters

Long term effects of advice to reduce dietary salt

Front cover was highly misleading

Critical faculties should always be exercised

Salt needs to be reduced in manufacturing and processing food

Authors' reply

Front cover was highly misleading

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ That small reductions in salt intake (2 g/day) have a small but significant effect on blood pressure is hardly surprising.¹Nevertheless, in populations this would have a large effect onreducing strokes, heart attacks, and heartfailure.

Hooper et al do not ask why reducing salt intake in the long term is so difficult. They claim that the interventions usedwere intensive, but most studies gave no details about what advicewas offered. Furthermore, 75% of salt intake comes from processedfood.² This needs to be avoided or contain less salt. Noneof the studies provided reduced salt foods.

Interpreting the study by Hooper et al is not helped by the editor writing the front cover of the BMJ, who seems to have reada different paper and misinterpreted the important positive findings.The confusion is increased by the authors' press release,³which rightly blames the difficulty in . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Systematic review of long term effects of advice to reduce dietary salt in adults: Lee Hooper, Christopher Bartlett, George Davey Smith, and Shah Ebrahim
BMJ 2002 325: 628. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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