Dietary habits improvement by which aims at low salt in Akita prefecture

Abstract

  Conventionally, Akita has been a prefecture with the highest mortality rate due to cerebrovascular diseases in Japan, nearly twice the rate of the national average for both men and women. This is because Akita prefecture has positioned stroke as a disease specific to Akita people and implemented a comprehensive stroke prevention project that aims to reduce the mortality rate due to stroke by half. Specifically a campaign was conducted, jointly by public and private sectors, to remedy dietary tendencies characteristic of Akita people, a high intake of salt and nutritional bias.