The expert committee on new dietary guidelines, appointed by the Indian Council of Medical Research, have come up with new facts on salts. It aid, “Chronic disease risk factors are a leading cause of death and disability in all countries and the important risk factor is increased blood pressure. Around 7.1 million deaths occur as a result of hypertension and therefore it is essential to have dietary approaches at a population level to decrease hypertension and salt is one of the important factors in the genesis of blood pressure. Hypertension is prevalent in 24-25 per cent of people in rural India,” the report said.
Apart from its relationship to hypertension, at intakes of 590-680 mmol (millimoles per litre), healthy individuals can also develop fluid retention.
A safe and adequate level to avoid hypertension is 1100-3300 mg/day. The minimum requirement for a healthy person is 500 mg of sodium for adults and for infants and children, it’s 58 mg/day and the maximum daily intake of sodium chloride should not exceed five gm per day. In some places, however, people consume up to 30 gm of salt every day and almost 40 per cent of families consume around 10 gm of sodium daily.
The dietary guidelines are being revised after a gap of 20 years. Besides salt, the ICMR will also fix the maximum and the minimum intake of protein, fat and carbohydrate, besides including new nutrients, dietary components like selenium, B6, dietary fibre and antioxidants.
“Since 1990, there has been newer information generated by international research, updated and more precise approaches adopted in assessing human nutrient requirements and dietary intakes and covering newer nutrients, which have not been considered hitherto,” said ICMR experts’ committee chairman B. S. Narasinga Rao in his draft report.