Salt substitutes — products that replace some or all of the sodium in table salt with potassium — are cheap, widely available, and backed by evidence showing they can meaningfully lower blood pressure. Yet almost no one is using them. That's the central finding of new research presented at the American Heart Association's Hypertension Scientific Sessions 2025.
The large national analysis, reported by Science Daily, found that fewer than 6% of all U.S. adults use salt substitutes. The figure has barely budged over nearly two decades of data, even as high blood pressure continues to affect nearly half the adult population. Between 2017 and 2020, roughly 122.4 million Americans — about 46.7% of adults — were living with hypertension, a condition that contributed to more than 130,000 deaths.
"Health care professionals can raise awareness about the safe use of salt substitutes by having conversations with their patients who have persistent or hard-to-manage high blood pressure," said lead study author Yinying Wei, a Ph.D. candidate at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Wei noted that the substitutes are especially promising for people whose blood pressure has proven difficult to control with other measures.
Salt substitutes work by swapping sodium for potassium, producing a similar flavor though sometimes with a slightly bitter taste when heated. The American Heart Association recommends that most adults consume no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day, with an ideal target below 1,500 milligrams for those with high blood pressure. Even cutting intake by 1,000 milligrams daily can produce noticeable improvements.
Most dietary sodium doesn't come from the salt shaker — it arrives in processed foods, packaged goods, and restaurant meals. But for the sodium people do add at home, a simple swap could make a real difference. Researchers describe the persistent gap in adoption as a major missed opportunity for preventing heart disease and stroke, two of the leading causes of death in the United States.
