Shake off the habit! It's salt awareness week

This year’s call during the salt awareness week is for people to pay more attention to the quantity of salt they take in daily.

Celebrated on every 14th to 20th of March, this year’s theme is ‘Shake The Habit’!

Many of us add salt out of habit, but it’s often unnecessary, and your food will taste good without it.

In fact, around 75 per cent of the salt we eat is already in everyday foods such as bread, breakfast cereal, ready meals, processed foods and some fruits and vegetables like spinach.

A good tip to help reduce the amount of salt in your diet is to taste the food first, before adding salt.

Research shows that on average Kenyans have a high salt intake; which is a major risk factor of hypertension and cardiovascular-related disease.

With only 8% of Kenyans limiting their consumption of salt, the majority of the participants knew that their high salt intake could cause certain health problems but they continued with the use, with no moderation.

The study which was conducted in Five Sub-Saharan African Countries suggested implementing programs to reduce salt in the food served in work or school canteens and coming up with policies and measures to limit salt intake in selected manufactured foods (e.g., bread).

Current South Africa is the only country in the African region that has taken regulatory steps to mandatorily reduce the salt content of selected foods.