The World Health Organization says a tablespoon of salt each day is all adults need

The World Health Organization (WHO) wants to see a decline in global salt consumption. If the global organization had its druthers, adults would eat no more than a tablespoon each day. It’s now setting benchmarks for the amount of salt in dozens of food and beverage categories (yes, potato chips are on the list). There’s a good reason for this push, the organization says: Meaningful salt reduction could save 2.5 million lives annually, preventing deaths from heart disease and conditions related to excessive salt intake. Given the march of processed foods across the planet, untethering us from too much salt will take time and effort: WHO is giving its member states until 2025 to lower their populations’ salt intake by about a third. But also given how difficult it is to get people, corporations, and tastes to change, WHO isn’t optimistic about that timeline. According to a Reuters report, an organizational statement said matter-of-factly, “The world is not currently on track to meet this goal.”