HEALTHY REASONING: Watch The Salt

By Allan Jones
Pride Health Columnist

I have seen many individuals sit down to eat and without even tasting the food in front of them, they reach for the salt shaker and cover their meal with salt. You ask why, and they will tell you the food tastes better. Many of them recognize the consequences of a high salt (sodium) diet, like high blood pressure, stroke, kidney disease, heart disease, and stomach cancer, but they continue anyway.

Sodium or salt is a vital nutrient and is necessary for the body to function, but our average daily consumption exceeds the maximum recommendation.

The Sodium Reduction Strategy for Canada was released in 2010. It recommended a number of strategies designed to reduce the current average daily intake of sodium from 3400mg to 2300mg by 2016 on an interim basis. The useful strategies recommended, are not being utilized due to a lack of willingness on the part of Industry to implement the recommendations of the Sodium Reduction Strategy Work Group. So in May of this year, NDP Member of Parliament, Libby Davies, seeing the importance of the recommendations as a way to improve overall health of Canadians, made an unsuccessful attempt via a private member’s bill, C-460, to establish as a Canadian standard, the lower daily salt intake level of 2300mg, moving from 3400mg. This new lower level would have required tremendous retooling and significant changes by processed food manufacturers, so they lobbied hard and defeated the bill through support from the governing Conservatives in Ottawa.

A Toronto based group Advocates for Black Health Improvement, which includes Food and Nutrition Consultant, Vida Stevens, tried to influence the decision in Ottawa by indicating that there is a need to go even lower with the daily recommended sodium level to 1500mg for Black individuals. They recognized that in Canada we do not have race based health data, however the United Kingdom have specific recommendation for the Black community. Also, the US Institute of Medicine, whose expertise is used for many of Canada’s nutrition-related laws and policy, recommends 1500mg as daily average intake of sodium for persons older than 51 years, and those of any age who are of Black African descent.

Further support for the lower recommended daily salt level for Black individuals, comes from the American Heart Association. In a statement released in May, The American Heart Association stated that they meticulously reviewed scientific research and recommends that all Americans eat no more than 1500mg a day of sodium. Current average sodium consumption in the United States for people age two and up is more than 3400 mg a day. A majority of the sodium Americans eat is in the form of salt that is added to processed foods and restaurant foods which makes it difficult for consumers to choose and control how much sodium they consume.

Here in Canada, it is clearly established that high salt content of our diet is causing many of the health problems we face as a community. We are seeing too many heart attacks, too many strokes, too many people on dialysis with damaged kidneys, we see an increased prevalence of stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on, all ailments related to too much salt being consumed.

Let us challenge our processed food manufacturers to reduce the salt content of their products. Spend your money on low sodium alternatives. Also watch the sodium levels in our tinned vegetarian products. Talk to the restaurants that you visit to pick up your oxtail, jerk chicken or curry goat. Let restaurant owners know your continued patronage is based on them reducing the amount of salt they put in the food they are supplying to our community. You taste some of these cooked meals and you can feel the “zing” from the high quantity of salt they use. These Caribbean and African restaurants have a responsibility to provide us with low salt content tasty food. If this is not the situation, refuse to purchase food from them until they change.

The individuals running for political office need to put health care of the Black community on their agenda, particularly the unique approach that is needed for different ethnic groups. We know that different ethnicities have different susceptibilities and propensities for certain diseases, and this is so for the Black community. It should be obvious to our political decision makers that the “one size fits all” approach, which we now have, cannot work. We desperately need a diversity approach to health care in this diverse and multicultural country of Canada.

While we wait for the politicians to get up to speed, take your health into your own hands and reduce your salt intake starting now…..just do it…please !!!

Allan Jones is a Health Promoter and Broadcaster. He can be reached at ajones@jjmedical.ca.