Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

recognises that:

(a)

high blood pressure is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, peripheral vascular disease and renal failure;

(b)

cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability in Australia, claiming the lives of 50,294 people in 2002, or 38 per cent of all deaths;

(c)

around 3.67 million Australians are affected by heart, stroke and vascular diseases;

(d)

1.10 million Australians are disabled long-term by heart, stroke and vascular diseases;

(e)

the prevalence of heart, stroke and vascular conditions increased by 18.2 per cent over the last decade; and

(f)

the total burden of heart, stroke and vascular diseases is expected to increase over the coming decades;

(2)

also recognises that:

(a)

salt appears to be the necessary cause of high blood pressure; and

(b)

controlling one’s salt intake plays a big role in controlling one’s blood pressure, which in turn reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease;

(3)

calls on the Australian Government to:

(a)

educate the Australian people on the dangers of a high salt diet; and

(b)

follow the United Kingdom’s example and label food with green lights, which identify at a glance the best foods on the market for salt content; and

(4)

on a bipartisan level, encourage Australians to reduce their salt intake and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

There is no doubt that Australians are facing many challenges with their health and none more so than high blood pressure. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, strokes, heart failure, peripheral vascular disease and renal failure. Salt looks to be the necessary cause of high blood pressure. If an individual is doing everything right by their health, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, getting plenty of exercise and watching their alcohol intake, but not controlling their salt intake, that person’s blood pressure is still likely to continue to rise.

Salt is found in almost every food we eat, but the amount present in different foods varies a great deal. Most of the salt we eat—about 75 per cent—comes from processed foods. High-salt processed foods include soy sauce, processed meats, canned soups, canned anchovies and stock cubes. Some foods contain higher amounts of salt than you may expect. For example, a jam sandwich has only 30 per cent less salt than a vegemite sandwich because most of the salt comes from the bread. Sea, onion, celery and garlic salts are not low sodium substitutes. A bowl of cornflakes has about the same amount of salt as a small packet of plain chips, and some sweet biscuits contain as much or more salt than savoury biscuits.

Some manufacturers have cut the salt content of their foods in recent years—companies such as Kelloggs, Uncle Tobys, Campbell-Arnotts and Unilever. However, notwithstanding the cutbacks, nearly 30 per cent of our population has high blood pressure and over half of those cases are untreated. More alarmingly, a new study has found that the average four-year-old consumes almost five grams of salt a day, more than double the recommended level. The salty Australian diet and lifestyle gives people a 90 per cent risk of dying from high blood pressure. In Queensland, a recent survey showed that four out of every five adults do not eat enough vegetables every day and most adults eat fast food more than three times a week.

I first became aware of the role of salt in our diet when I heard Dr Trevor Beard talking about the problem on Radio National earlier this year. Dr Beard pointed out that statistics on high blood pressure from the salt industry do not paint a true picture of the prevalence of high blood pressure, as they are based on a cross-section of ages. For those who reach middle age, nine out of 10 will get high blood pressure before they die. In response to a World Health Organisation report, the Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health, AWASH, has launched a five-year plan calling on food manufacturers and caterers to cut the salt content of foods by 25 per cent. As I said a little earlier, some of those manufacturers have certainly taken up that challenge. We are yet to reach the 25 per cent drop, though. The Drop the Salt! Campaign says, in short, that reducing salt consumption will save lives. AWASH also believes that food labels in Australia are often too complicated to really help consumers make clear choices about what they are buying. The National Heart Foundation of Australia recommends the maximum daily intake of salt for adults is six grams a day, but Australian adults eat an average of nine grams per day.

The good news is that blood pressure can be significantly lowered through diet. About 15 per cent of the salt we eat comes from salt we add at the table or in our cooking. However, the difficulty of lowering salt intake becomes more complicated when buying pre-packaged foods and trying to decipher the labels. The information on nutrition panels on packaged food is often difficult to read, let alone understand, and is especially difficult for older people with failing sight. Hand in hand with an education program that will alert Australians to the dangers of a high salt diet, we need to adopt a green light system for low salt, or sodium, foods similar to what has been introduced in the United Kingdom. Green light labelling on foods identifies at a glance the best foods on the supermarket shelf for salt content. As I have said, reading labels is not easy and interpreting them can be very confusing. By adopting the traffic light food labelling system we would be making healthy shopping easier. It would mean that anyone could treat salt related health problems easily just by eating fresh food and selecting processed foods that have a green light for salt. Being healthy is about getting the balance right, and the green traffic light system would make that challenge a whole lot easier.

I urge the government and all members of this House to support a green traffic light labelling system on all our processed foods. By reducing the salt content in our diet, we are reducing the risk of high blood pressure and all the associated complications. The health benefits to the Australian people would be enormous, and the health benefits to the health budget would also be enormous—saving billions of dollars, I would estimate, on health costs to individuals in this country. This could be done by undertaking and ensuring that people stick to a healthy living plan and a healthy eating plan that lowers the salt intake on a daily basis to each and every one of us.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge Dr Trevor Beard, who is an honorary research fellow at the Menzies Research Institute in Hobart. Listening to Dr Beard on Radio National earlier this year certainly brought home to me just how important it is to reduce salt in my own diet to remain healthy. I encourage all members of this House to stop and think about their own salt intake and how they can reduce it for a healthy and possibly longer life. So, instead of picking up the salt shaker, put the salt shaker back on the table where it belongs and check out the labels on the processed foods.

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