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Foreign wages war on salt in a new national strategy to get us making healthier choices and three national swimmers received their punishment after admitting to consuming cannabis it’s wednesday september 28th you’re watching the big story with me ciao suen subscribe to the straits times channel to stay up to date with our live news updates now salt is an
Ingredient that we add to just about every recipe from fried rice to chicken curry and even chocolate chip cookies we just can’t seem to get enough of it and that is becoming a problem but there is more than one type of salt in the market and there are plans for more healthier options in the near future our question is does it taste as good i picked my saltiest coli
Carianto and we put these salts and my culinary skills to the test so for the taste test we picked three different types of salt the common categories of salt are table salt natural salt and low sodium salt for the table salt option we picked this very commonly used which packet which costs 50 cents for one most families should be familiar with this for natural salt
We picked a himalayan rock salt which cost us 2.60 cents for this packet and for our low sodium and supposedly healthier option we picked the good salt now the low sodium option is supposed to be the healthiest but does it taste as good as the others foreign earlier each of these bowls have a different salt in them but yarn doesn’t know which color corresponds
To what type of salt so i guess we’ll be doing a fairly neutral taste test okay but for the record right we put an equal amount of salt in each bowl so they should be all equally salty laughs i just don’t taste the salt in it you’re right it’s definitely more bland more subtle than the other two the other two are more flavorful see i’m surprised because and
I’ll review to you yeah this is actually the common table salt that we’re used to oh so you would think that being the most unhealthy would taste the best but could it be because then you can’t taste the salt therefore you put in more salt which is then you know unhealthy maybe so do you want to guess between these two there’s one you liked more and one you like
Yes a bit less do you want to guess which one is i’m really hoping that the good salt is the one that tastes better so i would say this is the good sauce because this i actually thought was the salty yes yes it is it is which then again if let’s say we had gone with that theory that you know i i’ve said then that means you don’t need a lot of socks because the
Flavor is there i didn’t put less because it’s more salty yeah perhaps no use your way into it yeah i don’t know maybe we can ask you know the viewers what they think yes what do you think would you for four dollars and fifty cents pay for a healthier and i think equally good tasting song well i think now we’re gonna just uh i am going to go for the yummy one so
The yummy one is the himalayas and that was the result of our very very unscientific taste test i would say i was pretty surprised that despite adding equal amounts of salt to each bowl to me the good salt tasted the saltiest and speaking of surprising here’s a shocking statistic singaporeans consume on average two times the level of sodium recommended by the world
Health organization along with the growing sodium intake there is a rising prevalence of hypertension a major risk factor for stroke and cardiovascular diseases in a new initiative announced today singapore aims to reduce sodium intake by about 15 percent over five years one of the strategies is encouraging the use of lower sodium salts in place of regular salt
And working with retailers to make these substitutes more affordable a new lower sodium salt product case salt will be available progressively at some supermarket chains such as ntuc fairprize and shang tsung from early october onwards and joining us now to discuss the war on salt isam senior parliamentary secretary for health thanks for joining us today rohayu
So who is this message targeted at is it the hawkers the home cooks or basically anyone who dines out a lot or consumes a lot of takeaways thanks lynn for the question and thank you for having me here actually this message is for everyone because the singaporeans we have a very high sodium intake and it’s a cause of concern on average singaporeans consume 3600
Milligrams of sodium per day and that is close to two teaspoons of salt per day this is almost two times the recommendations by who and and that is something that’s worrying because high consumption of salt actually leads to um hypertension which actually causes stroke and cardiovascular diseases so this is of concern to us um when we talk about actually sending
This message and when i say it’s a message for everyone because we all consume food you know in in various forms we cook our own food we cook our own meals sometimes we get takeouts sometimes we eat in a restaurant so everyone in that whole ecosystem plays a part in a role in actually managing this issue and helping to see if we can all do our in reducing sodium
Consumption in our news and that’s something that i hope we can share with everyone and have people play a role in strengthening this message to the community so considering how much sodium we’re taking now cutting sodium intake by just 15 percent over five years sounds like quite a small reduction to me do you expect this to translate into significantly fewer
Cases of hypertension or how much impact do you think the strategy will have actually it’s when in coming up with this benchmark or target we look at two things firstly it’s um the benchmarking against international precedence because the other countries have done this and from our observation those countries that have documented success of around 13 to 22 percent
Of reduction in the population took about eight to ten years and so relatively our target of 15 over five years is actually a very reasonable target and there’s actually a lot of clinical and population studies that show that actually incremental reduction of sodium significantly reduces blood pressure and mitigates its related issue in blood pressure and this
Is regardless of individuals baseline sodium intake so in other words just reducing it already has significant population health benefits for example there’s a multi-country study published for the world health organization in 2007 which included asian countries like china indonesia and thailand and it was found at 15 reduction in mean sodium intake reduces the
Risk of death from cardiovascular diseases by seven percent and in a local study by nus saw seahawk school of public health a reduction of salt intake by 2 grams or one third of a teaspoon per day has been projected to lead to a substantial number of disability adjusted life years or dailies averted amounting to 4 000 dailies annually so one daily represents the
Loss of one year of healthy life so the significant um improvements in just actually reducing it incrementally of course we all want to do better and that’s something that we will continue to work on but realistically you know we have to start somewhere and we want to have a target that is reasonable and practical and giving time for us to build the ecosystem to
Reach this meaningful goal that sounds like a very reasonable target to me and it’s also very hopeful to know that even just a small change can have such a significant impact on our health but you know singaporeans have been encouraged to cut down on sugar and now we want them to cut down on salt as well how do you convince us as a nation whose favorite pastime is
Eating that this is the right thing to do what are some challenges that you predict we might face yes indeed too and that’s a challenge because the singaporeans we love our food they’re proud of it we are our favorite person is eating but eating healthily and cutting down on sugar or salt should not only not lessen our enjoyment in any way in fact dishes cooked
Using lower sodium salt does not compromise taste and this is something that i can confirm with you because i’ve also had that i’ve recently done a blind testis in minister ong and you really can’t tell the difference between food that is cooked with low sodium salt and now we are actually working towards creating a variety of these options there are many healthy
Choice products and dishes in the market that are lower in sugar and salt and are still flavorful so we will continue with this public education efforts to raise awareness on the effects of high salt intake and educate the public on available lower sodium options in a way we are creating an ecosystem where it’s easier for people to have access to health your
Choices that they are informed when they go out to choose their food lower sodium identifiers at fmb stalls and also lower and salt health healthier choice symbols in the packaging of ingredients all these will go towards creating awareness and allowing people to be more informed about the decisions they make on their food honestly all change is going to come
With a bit of difficulty people are going to have some trouble adjusting but that’s why we’re encouraging incremental change and you know taste buds change over time when we start encouraging eating something that’s less salty less with less sugar you would realize that anecdotally you would notice people will see yeah i mean over time i don’t think that i need
Sugar anymore so at the end of the day we need to remember this is for the health of singaporeans we are looking at making small changes that we can continue to inculcate in our day-to-day living change people’s habits to have health social lifestyle change to have healthier habits you know when they have healthy lifestyle they do better health you know wise and
That means that we can all work towards the generation of singaporeans that’s healthy and able to you know seize opportunities in the day so i hope that something singaporeans will work together with us on and i’m sure we can all achieve this goal if you work together and having tried the low sodium salt options myself i must say you’re absolutely right i barely
Tasted the difference thank you so much for the encouraging words this has been raha yamazam senior parliamentary secretary for health thank you sin it has emerged that joseph schooling and amanda lim are not the only swimmers in hot water for illegal drug use sports singapore has issued warnings to the two swimmers along with a third national swimmer tyong tian
Wei the trio had been investigated by the central narcotics bureau for drug-related offenses but all their urine tests for controlled drugs came up negative however all three confessed to consumption of said drugs while they were representing singapore overseas sport sg will suspend all support to the trio under the high performance scheme for a period of one
Month beginning from october 1st this means they will not receive training assistant grants and access to sports science and sports medicine facilities and services in this period tiong who is seen as a rising star in the pool will also have his scholarship benefits withdrawn for a month he certainly has had a breakthrough year he wasn’t the most motivated or by
His own confession hard-working athlete but you know he had a good c games became the first southeast asian to go under 22 seconds in the 50 meter freestyle event when he won gold in hanoi he then went to qualify for the final in the 50 meter fly at the world championship in budapest becoming just the third singaporean man of tanks young and joseph schooling to
Reach a final at the world championships he also excelled at the commonwealth games in birmingham in july and won silver in a 15 meter flight the special thing about tiong is that he was trained exclusively locally he did not go to the u.s route as many of his peers at the elite level in singapore have and so he was touted as proof that you know world-class talent
Could be developed on our own shores i think many are hoping this misstep will not affect his trajectory in the pool going forward police investigations are ongoing into a 37 year old man who was arrested for allegedly making a bomb threat on board a singapore airlines flight mindeth later verified the threat to be false the flight sq-33 from san francisco landed
Safely in singapore early this morning the straits times understands the man arrested is a foreign national he was arrested for making false threats of terrorist acts and for suspected consumption of controlled drugs under anti-terror rules it is an offense for a person to make false claims about carrying out an act of terrorism those found guilty can be punished
With a maximum fine of five hundred thousand dollars or a maximum jail term of 10 years or both visibly tired passengers from the flight appeared at the terminal at about 9 20 am and they proceeded to collect their luggage meanwhile an sia spokesman said the airline is assisting customers with the rebooking for any onward connections that they may have missed
Singapore-based in-flight caterer sets which is also the main ground handler at changi airport is proposing to buy a paris-based air cargo handler worldwide flight services for 1.19 billion euros if shareholders agreed to go ahead the combined group will become the world’s biggest global air cargo handler said said its network will cover trade routes responsible
For more than half of the world’s air cargo volume and four russian occupied regions of ukraine have voted overwhelmingly to join russia in referendums that have been condemned by international observers as hashem ukraine and the west warned that the vote may lead to former russian annexation of the territories apple has dropped plans to increase production of its
New iphones after an expected surge in demand failed to materialize people familiar with the matter telling bloomberg news that the company has taught suppliers to cut production by as many as 6 million units instead apple will aim to produce 90 million handsets in the second half of this year nearly the same number as a year ago now the return of formula one to
Singapore means road closures in and around the marina center and the padang for the next seven days affected roads include a nickel highway beach road and collier key probably best to take the bus or the train during this time until traffic flow goes back to normal by october 4th at 5 30 a.m meanwhile the marina bay street circuit is looking amazing already the
Custom-made floodlights have been switched on or 1 600 of them this weekend promises to be singapore’s biggest party since 2019 and boy am i ready for it and those are top stories for today visit straightestimes.com for more news and our youtube channel for more videos subscribe by hitting the red button below i’m ciao suen and i’ll see you tomorrow on the big story
Transcribed from video
Singaporeans consume twice the level of sodium recommended by WHO | THE BIG STORY By The Straits TimesliveBroadcastDetails{isLiveNowfalsestartTimestamp2022-09-28T100034+0000endTimestamp2022-09-28T101841+0000}
