Burden of cancer attributable to consumption of highly salted food in Japan in 2015

Abstract

Salt consumption is high in most parts of the world, particularly among populations in Asia-Pacific region, including Japan. The recent portion of global deaths attributable to excess salt was largest among dietary exposures. We estimated the cancer in 2015 attributable to highly salted food in the Japanese population. Consumption of highly salted food in grams per day was available by sex and age group for 2005 from the Japanese National Health and Nutrition Survey. The optimal consumption of highly salted food for this study was assumed to be 0 g/day. Population attributable fractions (PAFs) for stomach cancer, which is positively associated with highly salted food intake in Japan, were estimated for respective sex and age groups according to a standard formula, and aggregated to obtain the PAF among total cancer incidence and mortality. In both sexes, 2.4% of cancer incidence and 2.2% of cancer mortality in 2015 were due to intake of highly salted food. Annually at least 22,000 total cancer cases in Japan could have been prevented by avoiding highly salted food.