‘One pinch at a time’: ICMR flags high salt intake in India as major health risk

NEW DELHI: The Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE) has launched a caller inaugural aimed astatine reducing India’s brackish consumption, aft probe revealed that mean regular intake successful some municipality and agrarian areas exceeds the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommended bounds of 5 grams per day.The mean brackish intake successful municipality India stands astatine 9.2 grams per day, portion agrarian India averages 5.6 grams, some good supra the planetary wellness standard. “Excess sodium intake importantly increases the hazard of hypertension, stroke, bosom disease, and kidney disorders, making brackish simplification a nationalist priority,” said Dr Sharan Murali, Principal Investigator of the survey astatine ICMR-NIE.To tackle the issue, ICMR-NIE has rolled retired a three-year involution task successful Punjab and Telangana.

The inaugural aims to measure whether structured brackish simplification counselling, delivered by wellness workers astatine Health and Wellness Centres, tin assistance trim humor unit and sodium depletion successful individuals with hypertension.Currently successful its archetypal year, the task is focusing connected baseline assessments. Dr Murali stressed the value of co-creating the counselling worldly with assemblage wellness workers: “It’s not conscionable astir delivering wellness education—it’s astir listening, understanding, and gathering together.”

The survey besides recovered that low-sodium brackish substitutes—where sodium chloride is partially replaced with potassium oregon magnesium—can little humor unit by 7/4 mmHg connected average. However, a marketplace survey successful Chennai showed that low-sodium brackish was disposable successful conscionable 28% of retail outlets and was priced astatine much than treble the outgo of regular salt, indicating some consciousness and entree gaps.To physique momentum, ICMR-NIE has launched the #PinchForAChange run connected Twitter and LinkedIn, aiming to rise nationalist consciousness utilizing infographics and elemental messages.“This is not conscionable astir reducing salt,” said Dr Murali. “It’s astir restoring equilibrium successful our diets, our systems, and our hearts—one pinch astatine a time.”