A report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, claimed that cutting on 3 grams in the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the United States, while saving $24 billion in health costs per year.

A cut of 1 gram is reported to prevent 11,000 to 23,000 strokes, 18,000 to 35,000 heart attacks and 15,000 to 32,000 deaths from any cause, the researchers claimed.

The advantages to the U. S. population would be similar to reducing smoking by 50 percent, significantly lowering obesity rates and giving cholesterol drugs to virtually everyone to prevent heart attacks, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues.

Alternatively, obese adults are issued with tougher guidelines to reduce their body mass index by 5 percent, or all adults at low-to-medium risk for heart disease would need to take cholesterol-lowering statins.

In addition, the present scenario need that food manufacturers to have their primary target on the projected reduction in salt intake, since processed foods -- and not the salt in your salt shaker -- account for between 75 to 80 percent of American salt consumption.