A new study published on Monday suggests that a fall in salt consumption plays an important role in the decline of the deaths from heart attacks and strokes.
The results were published in the medical journal BMJ Open, according to The Guardian.
The study showed that daily intake of salt in the U.K. dropped between 2003 and 2011, while the amount of people dying from strokes declined by 42 percent and deaths from heart diseases fell by 40 percent.
The authors, from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and Queen Mary Unversity, London, said that while salt intake may have played a role in the declining deaths, the average salt intake is still too high and more needs to be done to bring it down. They added that reducing salt consumption reduces blood pressure, which plays a huge role in heart disease, The Yorkshire Post reported.
"It is likely that several factors, that is, the fall in blood pressure, total cholesterol and smoking prevalence, the reduction in salt intake and the increase in the consumption of fruit and vegetables, along with improvements in the treatment of blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, contributed to a decrease in stroke and ischaemic heart disease mortality," the authors said.
Urine samples were used for analyzing salt consumption, which fell by 1.4 grams per day, The Yorkshire Post reported.
The decline in salt consumption in the eight-year period took place mostly because of efforts by the Food Standards Agency to push food manufacturers to gradually reduce the amount of salt in their products, The Guardian reported.
The researchers looked through different official sources of health and lifestyle data, which includes several years of the Health Survey for England and the national diet and nutrition survey.
Co-author Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash), said Cash looks to reduce salt intake even more by 2017, but that ministers have to prepare to regulate to impose reduction targets if food producers do not cooperate, The Guardian reported.
"It would now be a gross breach of ethical and corporate responsibility for companies not to reduce salt as the benefits of salt reduction are now so clear," said Clare Farrand, program lead for World Action on Salt and Health.
