Why do we need to #SwitchTheSalt?
Why do we need to #SwitchTheSalt?
Almost everyone eats salt and almost everyone eats too much of it. Eating too much salt increases blood pressure, leading to heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Despite the efforts by governments and medical organisations over the last decade to reduce population salt intakes, little progress has been made. This is because people have become accustomed to the taste and dietary habits are hard to change. Salt is also a widely used ingredient in food manufacturing, and progress towards lowering levels in packaged foods has been slow.
Find out more about our work to scale up the use of potassium-enriched salt across the global food supply.
What is potassium-enriched salt?
Potassium-enriched salt is a practical and scalable approach to lowering blood pressure and with it, the risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Salt is made up of 100% sodium and chloride. A potassium-enriched salt, however, has some of the harmful sodium chloride replaced wi
Evidence library
Please find below a list of the key publications supporting the case for potassium-enriched salt. For a more comprehensive list, click here or to return to the main page click here.
Trials
Effect of Salt Substitution on Cardiovascular Events and Death.New England Journal of Medicine, 2021https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2105675
Salt substitution and salt-supply restriction for lowering blood pressure in elderly care facilities: a cluster-randomized trial.Nature Medicine, 2023https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02286-8
Effects of salt substitutes on clinical outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Heart 2022https://heart.bmj.com/content/108/20/1608.long
Effects of a reduced-sodium added-potassium salt substitute on blood pressure in rural Indian hypertensive patients: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trialThe American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2021https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916522003185
A guide to potassium-enriched salt
Please find below downloadable one-page guides for consumers and health professionals with key information on potassium-enriched salt.
For health professionalsA guide to potassium-enriched salt.Learn more
For consumersA guide to potassium-enriched salt.Learn more
WHO guidelineA summary for policy makersLearn more
FactsheetSwitching the world’s salt supply: Scaling up the use of potassium-enriched salt.Learn more
For meal producersLearn more
EvidenceUK evidence on using low-sodium salt substitutes.Learn more