Excessive salt consumption may be behind one in 10 deaths from heart disease and stroke worldwide — one in five for people younger than 70. The global total for annual deaths linked to sodium may be as high as 1.65 million.
These findings were published in a new study led by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, now dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who conducted the research while he was a faculty member at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). It was one of three studies on sodium consumption published August 14 in the New England Journal of Medicine.