Salt substitution is your diet is much easier if you’re in charge of the food, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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You can reduce your blood pressure and therefore your chances of a heart attack or stroke by substituting some of the table salt, or sodium chloride in your diet with potassium chloride, two recent studies demonstrate. Johns Hopkins cardiologist Seth Martin says this is much easier for the cook in the family to undertake.

Martin: You need to be someone who is cooking regularly to get the benefit, and so that means if you already cook regularly it would be easier. If you are not someone who shops and cooks and you could just swap out the contents of what you’re putting in there it could be a higher level of activation of what’s needed to actually take advantage of this intervention. How does it taste to you? Do you notice much of a difference or are you just as happy using the salt substitute? In which case it’s really just a matter of changing what you have on your grocery list and what you store in your kitchen.  :31

Martin says the benefits of cooking more at home are well known, and substituting potassium chloride may be added to the list. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.