Low sodium diet
diet that includes no more than 1,500 to 2,400 mg of sodium per day
A low sodium diet is a diet that includes no more than 1,500 to 2,400 mg of sodium per day.
The human minimum requirement for sodium in the diet is about 500 mg per day, which is typically less than one-sixth as much as many diets "seasoned to taste". For certain people with salt-sensitive blood pressure or diseases such as Ménière's disease, this extra intake may cause a negative effect on health.
WHO guidelines state that adults should consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium/day (i.e. about 5 grams; 1⁄6 oz of traditional table salt), and at least 3,510 mg of potassium per day. In Europe, adults and children consume about twice as much sodium as recommended by experts.
Health effects
A low sodium diet has a useful effect to reduce blood pressure, both in people with hypertension and in people with normal blood pressure. Taken together, a low salt diet (median of approximately 4.4 g/day – approx 1800 mg sodium) in hypertensive people resulted in a decrease in systolic blood pressure by 4.2 mmHg, and in diastolic blood pressure by 2.1 mmHg.
Advising people to eat a low salt diet, however, is of unclear effect in either hypertensive or normal tensive people. In 2012, the British Journal Heart published an article claiming that a low salt diet appears to increase the risk of death in those with congestive heart failure, but the article was retracted in 2013.
The public source identifies “Low sodium diet” as diet that includes no more than 1,500 to 2,400 mg of sodium per day. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around sodium, diet and includes.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2068354. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1800, 2012 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Low sodium diet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.