Survey investigating the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of Greeks towards salt

Hellenic Food Authority conducted a national survey regarding the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of Greeks towards salt. The study included a nationally representative sample of adults who were interviewed via telephone. The sample included 3609 adults who spoke Greek fluently, aged 25-74 years old and lived all over the country. The questionnaire had seventeen (17) questions (and two of them had an additional one open question). The results indicate that the participants: a) know the correlation between high salt intake and hypertension, while their knowledge on the relationship between diets high salt and other health problems is limited b) think that they consume the right or little amount of salt on a daily basis, whereas they do not know or are confused regarding the proper amount of salt intake recommended by the experts c) believe that the main source of salt in their diet is the salt which is added in food during cooking, possibly not being aware of the hidden salt in several foods (i.e. processed foods such as bread etc) d) have the custom to add salt during food preparation, while it is quite encouraging the fact that most of them do not add any salt at the table on their plate e) Moreover, only one out of four participants always reads the nutrition information on food labels, including the sodium content. Also, about half of them believe that meals in restaurants, taverns, etc are salty or too salty, however only few would like to read nutritional information about salt on the restaurant menus.GR; el; Hellenic Food Authority (EFET), Directorate of Nutrition Policy and Research, ddpe@efet.g