WSC 2025 | Implementing the switch to potassium-enriched salt to reduce stroke risk

So, potassium-enriched salt is one of probably the best-kept secrets in public health, and so we have to try to change that. So, you can buy potassium-enriched salt in 50-plus countries around the world, but in all of those countries, potassium-enriched salt would constitute less than 1% of salt sales. So, what we need to do is several things. We need to get people, the community, aware that potassium-enriched salt is an option. We need to get clinicians aware that they should be recommending it to people who’ve had a stroke or people who’ve got high blood pressure. And we need to get the food industry both putting it on the shelves of the supermarkets and also putting it into processed and packaged foods when they make them instead of using regular salt. The challenges in achieving this sort of vary a bit between whether you’re in a high-income setting where most of your salt comes from salt in processed and packaged foods, where really your target is the food industry, or in lower-income settings, where most of the salt that you eat comes from so-called discretionary salt that you add in the home when you’re cooking or seasoning foods. The challenge in low-income settings is that while potassium-enriched salt is still a very low-cost commodity, it’s about twice as expensive as regular salt. And if there’s a price impost, people won’t buy it. So what we have to figure out is how to get the price of potassium-enriched salt right down towards the price of regular salt. And that’s going to be a mix of different things. It’s going to be economies of scale, getting greater levels of production. It’s going to be government subsidies. It’s going to be policies, and it’s going to need to be tailored to each particular circumstance.

This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.