# Development of a Culinary Intervention (Cooking Class) for Salt Reduction in Japanese Home Cooking: Strategies and Assessment

## TL;DR

A cooking class was developed to help reduce salt in Japanese home cooking, showing a significant decrease in salt intake among participants.

## Contribution

A replicable low-sodium cooking class package was developed and shown to reduce salt intake by 1.38 g/day.

## Key findings

- A cooking class successfully reduced participants' salt intake by 1.38 g/day.
- Three strategies were developed to reduce salt while maintaining taste in traditional Japanese meals.
- The class package includes menus, recipes, and a manual for replication by others.

## Abstract

•Development of a cooking class to reduce salt in Japanese home cooking.•Strategies, menu, and recipes for salt reduction based on analysis of traditional Japanese cuisine.•Knowledge, techniques, and taste experience of salt reduction that can be applied at home.•A complete document for holding low-sodium cooking classes.•An effect of 1.38 g/day salt reduction in local residents in an interventional study.

Development of a cooking class to reduce salt in Japanese home cooking.

Strategies, menu, and recipes for salt reduction based on analysis of traditional Japanese cuisine.

Knowledge, techniques, and taste experience of salt reduction that can be applied at home.

A complete document for holding low-sodium cooking classes.

An effect of 1.38 g/day salt reduction in local residents in an interventional study.

Culinary interventions (cooking classes) are a potential educational tool for salt reduction in the home diet, but their content has never been reported in detail. This study aimed to develop a cooking class for salt reduction, describe its rationale and structure so that other parties could replicate it, and preliminarily assess its impact on salt intake.

A multidisciplinary research team developed a cooking class package to reduce salt content in the Japanese home diet. The package comprised its developmental policy, teaching methodology, a menu and recipes, and an implementation manual and aimed to allow third parties to replicate and modify the content. The team took the following step-by-step developmental approach. First, traditional home meals were modeled to create strategies contributing to a target of 2 g salt/meal. Then, educational topics were developed through these strategies, and finally, a dietitian produced menus and prepared documents for the class. The impact of the cooking class was assessed in a nonrandomized study of community residents. The outcome was differences in urinary salt excretion before and after the intervention. General linear models were used to account for the possible confounders.

The authors assumed 4–7 g salt/meal from analyzing typical Japanese home diets and developed 3 strategies: (1) restricting salt content in the main dish, (2) maintaining good tastes without salty dishes, and (3) balancing nutrition with low-salt dishes. On the basis of these strategies, the authors selected a total of 5 educational topics that participants could learn and apply at home: 1a, a simple and reliable technique to limit salt in a serving; 2a, excluding salty dishes; 2b, staple foods with notable flavor and aroma; 3a, flavoring without salt in side dishes; and 3b, ingredients that should be used intentionally. The team dietitian translated these educational topics into a menu and recipes for hands-on training and prepared a manual for conducting the class. The class developed using this approach was successfully overseen by a dietitian outside the research team. In the validation study, the intervention group (n=52) showed a greater decrease in urinary salt excretion than the control group (n=46), with an adjusted difference of −1.38 g (p=0.001).

The authors developed a cooking class package for salt reduction so that third parties could replicate and modify the class. The significant salt reduction noted in this study warrants further studies to apply this cooking class to other populations.

Image, graphical abstract