Vietnamese consume salt twice as much as WHO-recommended level

Trung Kien 13:50, 2019/06/17

The amount of salt recommended by the WHO is below 1.5g for under one-year-old children and less than 0.3g of salt for infants.

A Vietnamese adult consumes 9.4g of salt per day, twice as much as the World Health Organization (WHO)'s recommendation, VnExpress reported.

Eating more than 5g of salt per day will increase vascular tone, cause water retention in cells and hypertension, Vice President of Vietnam Heart Association Pham Manh Hung said at a medical conference in Hanoi on June 15.

Illustrative image. Source: Wikipedia

Salt (NaCl), made up of two chemical elements: sodium and chloride. According to the National Institute of Nutrition, one teaspoon with 5g of salt contains about 2,000 mg of sodium, which is equivalent to the amount of salt that should only be used during the day for an adult. The amount of salt recommended by the WHO is below 1.5g for under one-year-old children and less than 0.3g of salt for infants.

According to Hung, consuming excessive salt increases the incidence of hypertension and deaths from cardiovascular disease. In Vietnam, one out of every five adults has hypertension, and one in three deaths is due to cardiovascular disease, mainly stroke, he added.

Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien acknowledged that Vietnam faces both infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In particular, NCDs accounts for about 70% of the health burden in Vietnam and is the leading cause of death. "This is a big challenge for Vietnam's health sector," said Minister Tien.

In Vietnam, the proportion of people with hypertension who have not been diagnosed accounts for nearly 57% and 70% for diabetes .

To prevent and limit non-infectious, cardiovascular and diabetes diseases, the Vietnamese government launched "Vietnam health program" on February 22 with 11 solutions, including reasonable nutrition.

People need to halve daily salt intake to prevent hypertension, stroke, myocardial infarction, cardiovascular and non-communicable diseases, Tien stressed.

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