The Ministry of Health and Wellness is turning up the volume on a quiet but serious health threat—too much salt in our diets. With the launch of its “Shake the Salt Habit” campaign, the ministry is encouraging Belizeans to cut back on sodium under the theme “Less Salt, Better Health.” The goal? To reduce the rising number of deaths linked to noncommunicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes. As part of the campaign, the ministry hosted the Shake the Salt Forum at Old Belize, where they also unveiled a new educational video aimed at food vendors, a key step in changing how salt is used in everyday meals. We spoke with Robyn Daly, Technical Advisor for Nutrition at the Ministry of Health and Wellness, who shared more about this important initiative.
Robyn Daly, Technical Advisor for Nutrition, MOHW
“One of the main strategies is to use less. So we highlighted the excessive use of salt because many times they do bottled seasonings and you don’t see herbal based seasonings. So that’s one strategy that we are enforcing and encouraging, which would be to use more onion and garlic, cilantro, that kind of thing. Refrain from using a lot of bottled seasonings. Also, make sure that your food isn’t cooked with a lot of fat as well. We highlighted fat today as well. In terms of food preparation, making food prepared in a healthier way. So the type of fat used. We also discussed individual portions as well, and we also touch sugar. But salt is an important part of the entire campaign because of the fact of heart disease. Heart disease is the number one cause of mortality in the country. So we share statistics on that. And we also highlighted that when we look at what causes heart disease, hypertension is a major risk factor. What causes hypertension? There is a major risk factor, again with the diet, having high sodium or high salt diets. So there is a link overall looking at NCDs and looking at how we can use nutrition to help manage NCDs in terms of less salt, less sugar, less fat, better food preparation.”