Salt in Your Food: The Effects on Health

In “Salt, We Misjudged You” (Sunday Review, June 3), Gary Taubes contends that decades of studies have failed to demonstrate that diets high in salt, or sodium, are harmful, and that advocates of restricting salt “essentially rely on the results from a 30-day trial of salt.”

In fact, huge amounts of evidence from animal, clinical, cohort and intervention studies demonstrate that high-sodium diets raise blood pressure, and that higher blood pressure promotes heart attacks, strokes and kidney disease.

Critics of efforts to reduce salt acknowledge that studies show those two relationships, but demand studies that directly link lower salt to lower risk of heart disease. Such studies have now been done.

The 15-year follow-up on the Trials of Hypertension Prevention found a 30 percent reduction in the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events.

As the Institute of Medicine recommended in 2010, it’s high time that the Food and Drug Administration began limiting sodium in packaged and restaurant foods.