BMJ  2007;334 (28 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39196.679537.47

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Editor's choice

Time to talk salt

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

Just over a decade ago, the BMJ found itself in the eye of the storm about dietary salt (BMJ 1996;312:1239-40). We had published the Intersalt study some years previously; it concluded that populations with high average intakes of salt were likely to have higher average blood pressures. But the salt producers' trade organisation, the Salt Institute, had criticised the study's methods and asked the investigators to hand over their raw data for reanalysis. A reanalysis was done—by the original investigators—and published in the BMJ (BMJ 1996;312:1249-53). The findings were the same.

It's worth remembering this skirmish in the war on dietary salt, now that the battle around the evidence linking salt and heart disease has largely been won. At the time we knew that dietary salt was linked to increased blood pressure, and over the next decade the link to actual cardiovascular disease grew stronger. So did the . . . [Full text of this article]

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The divine salt

BM Hegde
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Stil no proper evidence to go so hard against salt intake

Sam Tait
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