Dr. Suat Günsel University of Kyrenia Hospital Cardiologist Specialist Assoc. Prof. Dr. Barış Buğan also mentioned that one of the most important aspects of a healthy diet is controlling the salt consumption.  Dr. Barış Buğan stated that excessive salt consumption leads to critical diseases such as high blood pressure, heart diseases, kidney diseases, obesity, diabetes and some cancer types.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Barış Buğran, stated the following with reference to “12-18 March, World Salt Awareness Week:

“World Health Organization; recommends a sodium intake of grams to prevent diseases . In Turkish society, even though the salt consumption has always been excessive, the amount has decreased gradually with the help of awareness raising campaigns. Despite this, according to the studies of Turkish Society of Hypertension and Renal Diseases, the daily salt consumption is still over excessive than the suggested amount of consumption for disease prevention.

It should not be forgotten that in patients with hyper blood pressure and other diseases caused by excessive salt consumption, the main reason for drug resistance is salty diet. Another false belief is that the not adding salt on meals is enough to limit the salt intake. As long as consume food high in salt content such as readymade food, even if we don’t add salt on to the food, we still consume an excessive amount of salt.

CHECK THE LABELS ON THE FOOD!
For this reason, creating awareness and informing society about the negative effects of excessive salt consumption on health are becoming more important and ‘Salt Awareness Week’ events are held every year in order to reduce excessive salt consumption.  The ’Salt awareness Week’ will be held between the 12^th and 18^th of March 2018 this year.  The message which needs to reach our society must be “THE HIDDEN DANGER: Most of the salt we consume is hidden within the readymade food we buy. Check the labels of food and change your preferences to consume less salt”.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO TO REDUCE SALT CONSUMPTION?

Daily salt consumption should not exceed 5 gr.  In order to ensure this, the following must be taken into consideration;

1. Reduce the amount of salt usage during meal preparation, cooking and consumption. Salt should not be added, if possible, during preparation and cooking, due to the presence of sodium in the food.
2. You should not add more salt to your meals and remove the salt from your table.
3. You must be careful about consuming sodium based components such as mono sodium glutamate, sodium nitrite, sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate and sodium ascorbate used by the food industry which are usually present in the packaged products, because these increases the salt/sodium content.
4. Because of its high salt content, the following must be consumed in small amounts: Readymade sauces ( such as; soy sauce, ketchup sauce, barbecue sauce, salsa sauce, mustard, pasta sauce ), snacks ( such as; potato chips, grain based bars, fruit based bar, extrude products, popcorn), salted dried nuts (such as; hazelnut, peanut, walnut, almond, roasted chickpea, roasted nuts, gourd seeds, sunflower seeds and all kinds of seeds), pickles and salted food (such as; green and black olives, pickled vegetables), canned fish, salted smoked and salted meat and fish products, aromatic, non-aromatic , natural-unnatural mineral drinks.
5. The salt context of homemade pickles, tomato paste, preserved grape leaves, etc. are very high. Because of this, they must be consumed in small amounts and you must avoid using excessive amount of salt while preparing them.
6. In order to reduce the amount of salt in salted food, you can either wash them or keep them in water for a while.
7. You must pay attention to the label information on the store bought products and prefer either no salt added or low salt products.
8. The label information of packaged products must be read and in similar products, no salt added or low salt products must be preferred.
9. When eating outside, you must ask about the salt context of the food and if possible, ask no salt added or low salt variations to be prepared
10. You must use natural flavour enhancers (onion, garlic, spices, lemon, vinegar, pepper etc.)

Remember, if an individual insists on keeping a low salt diet, eventually they will get used to it.”