Introduction:

Excessive salt consumption contributes to the development of chronic non-communicable diseases such as kidney disease, some types of cancer and arterial hypertension (AHT); on the other hand, its excessive consumption also acts as the main risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease.

Objective:

To describe the characteristics of food practices related to dietary salt consumption during 2018.

Methodology:

Virtual cross-sectional descriptive observational survey by Google forms to 269 people aged 20 years and older from May and June 2018. Five were excluded because they did not meet inclusion criteria.

Results:

A total of 264 persons participated, 73.1% of whom were female. The 31.4% were between 25-29 years old, 89.8% resided in the Central Department. 44.7% preferred salty culinary preparations. 51.9% qualified food without salt as healthy. 64.4% prefer to get information about health issues on websites. 72.3%, when deciding to take care of their health with meals, consider fats and fried foods. 65.2% stated that they have a history of high blood pressure at home and think that it raises blood pressure in 96.6%.

Conclusion:

The main characteristics of the dietary practices related to salt consumption of the study population were their preference for salty culinary preparations, their perception of food without salt as healthy, and they found no difference between the taste of food prepared inside and outside the home, they ignore salt consumption when they decide to take care of themselves with their meals, even though they believe that dietary salt raises blood pressure.

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