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Food agency launches campaign to reduce salt intake
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     The Food Standards Agency, the United Kingdom's food safety watchdog, has launched a campaign to encourage people to reduce the amount of salt in their diet.

    It recommends that individuals eat no more than 6 g of salt a day, a figure that is based on advice from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy in 1994 and endorsed last year by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition in its report Salt and Health.

    However, the agency says men are eating on average 11 g of salt a day while women eat an average of 8.1 g a day.

    A high salt intake can increase blood pressure, says the agency, citing the 2001 annual report of the chief medical officer of the Department of Health. And it cites figures from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence that the cost to the NHS of prescriptions for reducing high blood pressure is around £840m ($1510m; 1230m), nearly 15% of the total annual cost of all primary care drugs.

    John Krebs, chairman of the agency, said, "We want to encourage everyone to see how they can reduce the salt they eat. By cutting back on adding salt to food at home and when eating out, as well as looking at what's on the labels of processed foods, it's possible for people to make positive health choices."

    But he acknowledged that the biggest battle was with processed foods, including bread and cereals, which are estimated to account for 75% of the population's salt intake.

    "The food industry is about two thirds of the way to reaching our target of a 1 g reduction in processed foods by the end of 2005," said Sir John. "However, to reach the ambitious target of 6 g per day by 2010 will require further action by both consumers and industry if we are to reduce the human and health costs of eating too much salt."

    Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at St George's Hospital and a long time campaigner against high salt content in foods, welcomed the move but felt it put too much of the onus on the consumer, rather than putting pressure on the food industry through legislation.

    He dismissed the Salt Manufacturers' Association claim that it was solely overeating and drinking too much alcohol that caused high blood pressure, rather than high levels of salt, as "complete rubbish."

    The difficulty of achieving a reduction in blood pressure by advising people to reduce their salt intake was highlighted, however, by a systematic review published in the BMJ two years go.

    The review, whose lead author was Lee Hooper, a research fellow at the University Dental Hospital of Manchester, concluded: "Intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programmes, provide only small reductions in blood pressure and sodium excretion, and effects on deaths and cardiovascular events are unclear" ( BMJ 2002;325: 628).

    Ms Hooper told the BMJ that one of the reasons that such interventions had not proved effective was that a high proportion of the salt that people consumed was in processed food. Unless something was done to reduce salt in processed foods, people would find it difficult to cut down, she said.(Lynn Eaton)