Starting on the first of February, I stopped adding extra salt to everything I eat. This doesn’t mean I’m not eating something cooked with salt, I’m just not picking up the salt shaker and pouring more salt into my food. I haven’t felt a huge difference yet, and I doubt I will, but I know it will make a difference in the long run. From the linked article:

In a report that may bolster public policy efforts to get Americans to reduce the amount of salt in their diets, scientists writing in The New England Journal of Medicine conclude that lowering the amount of salt people eat by even a small amount could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking, obesity and cholesterol levels.

If everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year and between 44,000 and 92,000 fewer deaths, according to the study, which was conducted by scientists at University of California San Francisco, Stanford University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center.

Those are pretty startling figures and pretty good reasons to stop consuming so much salt.