Predictors of Perceived Salt Intake and Actual Salt Intake in Romania. Implications for public policy

Abstract

Salt intake is one of the important predictors of hypertension, a widespread chronic disease among adults. Much remains to be known about its causes, especially in the Romanian context, where there is a scarcity of analyses on this particular topic. Its predictors are relevant for public policy in order to evaluate what strategy should be adopted given actual levels of salt intake and the way people think about their levels of salt intake. Our analyses focus on actual and perceived salt intake. Data for this analysis come from the SEPHAR project, gathered in 2016 (wave 3), a nationally representative sample of Romanians. After noting a major discrepancy between perceived and actual levels of salt intake, we used two regressions with actual and perceived salt intake as dependent variables and three types of factors as independent variables: socio-demographic (age, gender, region, type of locality, education), lifestyle (fat diet, alcohol consumption, active lifestyle, and smoking) and related diseases (obesity and diabetes). Results show Romanians have similar levels of salt intake perceptions independently of the characteristics considered, except fat diet and diabetes, and similar levels of actual salt intake except age and gender, even though previous research shows that there are differences between individuals across these characteristics when it comes to considering hypertension as a dependent variable. We conclude by noting policy interventions regarding salt intake based on the results of this research, especially the need to update the current Romanian TV campaign to reduce salt intake or similar campaigns from other countries.