Reading time: 2 minutes – Spotted on New Scientist
The world is in the grip of a health crisis linked to our excessive consumption of salt, which largely contributes to an increase in the number of cases of high blood pressure, causing many deaths. Of the fifty million deaths that occur on our planet each year, nearly 10 million are attributable to complications of a hypertension problem.
Our relationship with salt therefore constitutes a public health issue: this is why New Scientist questions the behaviors to adopt in order to combine taste pleasure and health. Increasing awareness campaigns to encourage populations to eat less salty is obviously fundamental, but science suggests going further. Because the enemy is not exactly salt, but rather the sodium it contains; but this is able to give way to another chemical element, much more recommendable.
The key could lie in the partial replacement of the sodium chloride making up the salt with potassium chloride. Not only does the latter have a similar taste – even if it seems slightly more bitter or acidic – but it is much less harmful to health. An experiment carried out in a Chinese village, whose inhabitants were ordered to use a modified salt (75% sodium and 25% potassium), was, for example, a great success.
The test lasted four and a half years, during which this salt was used not only for cooking, but also to season dishes when served, as well as for their preservation. The results showed that ultimately the village experienced fewer heart attacks, fewer cardiovascular problems and simply fewer deaths than the surrounding 300 villages.
A five-star replacement
Announced in 2021 at a congress of the European Society of Cardiology, the results – striking – apparently caused a sensation, but the conclusions of the study were ultimately not as thorough as they should have been. The authors simply stated that reducing the sodium level in salt was beneficial, but they should have actually gone further and highlighted the active role of potassium in preserving patients’ health.
The positive impact of potassium on blood pressure was highlighted in the 1970s, thanks to research carried out by George Meneely of Vanderbilt University (Tennessee). Present in quantity, it helps the kidneys get rid of excess sodium. “Potassium acts as a natural diuretic”comments Swapnil Hiremath, from the Canadian University of Ottawa, who adds that that’s not all: it also has a direct effect on blood pressure, since it allows blood vessels to relax.
In reality, many of us suffer from potassium deficiencies. Official recommendations advise consuming around 3.5 grams per day, but the global average is only 2.25 grams per day. Only 14% of people on this planet reach the recommended threshold, mainly through the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables – and unprocessed foods, because the cooking and processing phases tend to leak potassium.
So why not immediately replace some of the sodium in salt with potassium? Firstly because it is not easy to change ancestral habits. Potassium “was never considered a goal” to achieve, summarizes Bruce Neal, Australian specialist in global health issues. But there is another reason, quite worrying on paper: present in excess in the body, potassium could cause damage.
This is called potassium, or hyperkalemia: when the kidneys are unable to remove excess dietary potassium, it remains in the blood, which can cause heart rhythm problems or even heart attacks. The only thing is: as Bruce Neal points out, the probability of serum potassium is extremely low. People suffering from kidney problems are more vulnerable, but they are already advised to avoid salt, underlines the specialist, who is far from being the only one to campaign for salt producers to now use potassium chloride .
