Thanks for your interest! You would have seen the discussion of potassium in the section on potential interventions—and I think the TLDR is that it does look good, but does cost money. Hence, we’re pursuing sodium reduction right now; but as we work with our partners doing the actual advocacy reach-out to governments, we’ll definitely get them to raise potassium as an option. Hopefully, in the long term, economies of scale make these more cost-competitive.
That makes a lot of sense—in practice, there are many relevant considerations and other interventions might well be preferable in many contexts.
The expert opinion
[...] though a Chinese RCT does show positive results, and the current evidence is convincing, still more studies are needed, with the magnitude of benefit not as large as you would think.
also sounds as if potassium-enriched salt surely helps to some degree, but probably isn’t a solution by itself. And I get the impression that research in the coming years will probably improve the uncertainties here.
Apart from this, I am a bit surprised that the costs (“perhaps double the price”) would be a problem for richer countries. If I am understanding this right, this should still be obviously worth it as a health expenditure? A very simple estimate might be:
lost expected life due to high blood pressure: ~2 years (scaling the DALY burden to a single person)
expected gains from switching to potassium-enriched salt: ~1/2 year (I am guessing)
The thing is that potassium salt (or mixed sodium/potassium salts) are available in rich country; it’s really just a matter of uptake. Consumers might not know or think much about the health aspects of things; they might not be price sensitivity; and even “double” is an off the cuff estimate by the expert, and it probably depends on country and location (e.g. f I check Walmart’s e-commerce website, Morton’s potassium salt is 10x as expensive as normal salt).
So it goes back to policy, and whether governments should just regulate sodium content even in salt—we didn’t really explore this, given the higher evidence base and cheapness of salt policies.
Consumers might not know or think much about the health aspects of things
This describes me quite well in many of my health choices, and unfortunately this is apparently really common.
potassium salt is 10x as expensive as normal salt
In my case, I also did not find salt that is pre-mixed at a price that makes sense to me—I bought a pharma-grade bag of KCl and mixed it with usual table salt myself[1], which resulted in a net-price that is 3x of the usual sodium salt.
So it goes back to policy, and whether governments should just regulate sodium content even in salt—we didn’t really explore this, given the higher evidence base and cheapness of salt policies.
That sounds very reasonable—I’ll be looking forward to hearing about updates in the future!
Hi Mart,
Thanks for your interest! You would have seen the discussion of potassium in the section on potential interventions—and I think the TLDR is that it does look good, but does cost money. Hence, we’re pursuing sodium reduction right now; but as we work with our partners doing the actual advocacy reach-out to governments, we’ll definitely get them to raise potassium as an option. Hopefully, in the long term, economies of scale make these more cost-competitive.
That makes a lot of sense—in practice, there are many relevant considerations and other interventions might well be preferable in many contexts.
The expert opinion
also sounds as if potassium-enriched salt surely helps to some degree, but probably isn’t a solution by itself. And I get the impression that research in the coming years will probably improve the uncertainties here.
Apart from this, I am a bit surprised that the costs (“perhaps double the price”) would be a problem for richer countries. If I am understanding this right, this should still be obviously worth it as a health expenditure? A very simple estimate might be:
lost expected life due to high blood pressure: ~2 years (scaling the DALY burden to a single person)
expected gains from switching to potassium-enriched salt: ~1/2 year (I am guessing)
expected costs: 80 years * 2⁄3 kg/year * $10/kg = ~$550
resulting cost-effectiveness (assuming 1 year = 1 DALY): $1100 / DALY averted
Of course this isn’t comparable to GiveWell effectiveness, but it is really cheap compared to other health expenses.
The thing is that potassium salt (or mixed sodium/potassium salts) are available in rich country; it’s really just a matter of uptake. Consumers might not know or think much about the health aspects of things; they might not be price sensitivity; and even “double” is an off the cuff estimate by the expert, and it probably depends on country and location (e.g. f I check Walmart’s e-commerce website, Morton’s potassium salt is 10x as expensive as normal salt).
So it goes back to policy, and whether governments should just regulate sodium content even in salt—we didn’t really explore this, given the higher evidence base and cheapness of salt policies.
That makes a lot of sense!
This describes me quite well in many of my health choices, and unfortunately this is apparently really common.
In my case, I also did not find salt that is pre-mixed at a price that makes sense to me—I bought a pharma-grade bag of KCl and mixed it with usual table salt myself[1], which resulted in a net-price that is 3x of the usual sodium salt.
That sounds very reasonable—I’ll be looking forward to hearing about updates in the future!
with the hope that diluting by 1⁄3 will not be too much for the anti-hygroscopic components of the store-bought table salt