Barbadians have an unhealthy love affair with salt that is no laughing matter.Our cultural practices that have seen our majority Black population using preserved foods with high salt content goes back hundreds of years.It was part of our survival process. The available sources of cheap food often came in the form of meats preserved in brine, such as pigtails, salted fish and in later years, corned beef.The population’s desire for high-salt foods has also been fuelled by our modern fast food lifestyle as food producers globally continue to push highly processed items that invariably contain high levels of salt and sugar.High salt and sugar intake are major contributing factors in lifestyle diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, which lead to major health challenges like heart disease and strokes.A 2015 paper titled The Investment Case for Non‐communicable Disease (NCD) Prevention and Control in Barbados, coordinated by the Ministry of Health, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), laid out a most unflattering picture of the impact of NCDs in our population.The opening paragraph of the executive summary was compelling reading.
