Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City.

Our goal is to bring

scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews

with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more.

If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call.

Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Susan Main, the director of the Center for Food Safety

and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration, about new guidelines the agency

has released for reducing sodium intake by asking food manufacturers to reduce salt in their products.

Let's listen.

Susan Maine, thanks so much for joining me.

It's my pleasure to be here with you today, Stephanie.

So research tells us that we consume 50% more sodium every day than recommended.

For kids, it's nearly 100%.

So what are the health impacts of too much sodium in our diets?

These high sodium intake levels are really concerning because excess sodium is a key

contributor to high rates of hypertension, and also known as high blood pressure, and cardiovascular

disease. And hypertension is epidemic in the U.S., and it affects more than an estimated

100 million adults, which is approximately half of our

adult population. Hypertensions also associated with a whole array of other health conditions,

...