On average, people around the world eat way more salt than doctors recommend—about twice as much. Health experts say we should eat less than 5 grams a day, but most of us are eating nearly 11 grams.

Eating too little salt—like only 5 grams a day—might actually be bad for you, even though we usually think salt is bad. Your body needs some sodium to work right, and going below what most people eat globally could be risky in ways we don’t fully understand yet.

In the Americas, most people consume more than 9 grams of salt daily. This finding is from the abstract summary - full study details were not available

Eating too much salt—more than 2,000 mg a day—can raise your chances of having a stroke or heart problems, but cutting back to that level or less may help lower your blood pressure and keep you from dying of heart disease.

People who eat less than 2,300 mg of salt per day for a long time are 25% less likely to die from any cause than people who eat more than 3,600 mg of salt per day.

When people who don’t get high blood pressure from salt eat more or less salt, their kidneys adjust how much salt they pee out—no matter if they’re male or female.