#SwitchTheSalt

Why do we need to #SwitchTheSalt?

Almost everyone eats salt and almost everyone eats too much of it. Eating too much salt increases blood pressure, leading to heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Despite the efforts by governments and medical organisations over the last decade to reduce population salt intakes, little progress has been made. This is because people have become accustomed to the taste and dietary habits are hard to change. Salt is also a widely used ingredient in food manufacturing, and progress towards lowering levels in packaged foods has been slow.

Find out more about our work to scale up the use of potassium-enriched salt across the global food supply.

What is potassium-enriched salt?

Potassium-enriched salt is a practical and scalable approach to lowering blood pressure and with it, the risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Salt is made up of 100% sodium and chloride. A potassium-enriched salt, however, has some of the harmful sodium chloride replaced with potassium chloride. Potassium-enriched salt can be used as a direct substitute for table salt in cooking and seasoning, with most people unable to taste the difference.

Why is potassium important?

Potassium helps lower blood pressure and the main sources in the diet are fresh fruits and vegetables. The widespread potassium deficiency that we see today is largely because we’re eating more processed and packaged foods (which tend to be high in salt, or sodium) and less fresh produce. Some food processing methods can also remove some of the naturally occurring potassium from the source ingredients.

Why now?

There is now even stronger evidence supporting the use of potassium-enriched salt. In particular there are now large international studies demonstrating that switching to potassium-enriched salt has clear protective effects on blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease events and premature deaths in different populations.

Visit our evidence library for a comprehensive collection of published research on all aspects of potassium-enriched salt.

Learn more

What do guidelines say?

But despite the weight of evidence, a systematic review of high blood pressure treatment guidelines from around the world showed that while almost all mention sodium reduction, only a handful made specific reference to potassium-enriched salt. So we believe it is time to update all guidelines to encourage doctors to consider recommending potassium-enriched salt to people with high blood pressure.

Read the WHO guidelines

Where can you find it?

Want to know if you can buy potassium-enriched salt in your country? Use our product finder below which has links to brands available around the world. Where no product link exists, we’ve included an example of where it can be purchased online.