About 50 million Americans suffer from high blood pressure, which kills more than 42,000 people and contributes to the deaths of 210,000 each year.
Sacks and the DASH team say the results make it clear that the government and food industry should work to reduce the level of salt intake in people's diets.
"The recommended upper limit [of sodium intake by the Food and Drug Administration] should be lowered," Sacks says. "[Food manufacturers] should reduce the amount of salt in the foods they make and prepare more low-salt varieties of foods, like they do with low-fat foods."
In the team's 1997 study, patients who had hypertension showed an 11.4-point decline in blood pressure when using the DASH diet.
In the recent study, a combination of the DASH diet and reduced salt intake resulted in an 11.5-point decrease.
This has led the Salt Institute, a non-profit association of salt producers, to claim that the DASH diet produced most of the effect and that efforts to combat hypertension should focus on that, rather than on reduction of salt intake.
"The new DASH-Sodium Study confirms that most of the blood pressure benefits of combining the DASH Diet with sodium reduction comes from the DASH Diet itself, not the amount of sodium in the diet." said Salt Institute President Richard L. Hanneman in a press release.
Read more in News
During Exam, Man Threatens to Blow Up Science CenterRecommended Articles
-
Infants’ Taste for Salt May Predispose to HypertensionDefying a common belief that hypertension cannot be predicted in children, a Harvard Medical School professor has recently reported infants’
-
COLORFUL CHEMISTRYThe sodium salt of benzene azo-8-acetylanimo-napthol-disulphonic acid has been discovered by reputable chemists to be the exact equivalent of crimson.
-
Colonial Science Devices on View In MallinckrodtAmerica's oldest scientific equipment goes on display tomorrow in Mallinckrodt lobby. Considered the best collection of 18th century apparatus in
-
Profs Petition FDA for Salt RegulationIn response to reports of increased salt consumption nationwide, three Harvard professors joined a group of health organizations to petition
-
Salt Intake Remains the SameContrary to expectations, the salt intake of Americans has remained consistent over the past five decades, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.
-
New Low Sodium Deli Meats Promote Healthy EatingWhen Mark F. Atiyeh ’14 took a bite of his first turkey sandwich of the school year in Currier House Dining Hall, he realized something tasted different.
