59 years of 183 mmol (4.2 g)/day in men and 142 mmol (3.3 g)/ day in women.

Worldwide, there has been even greater variation in sodium intake, ranging from an estimated mean intake of 0.02 g (1.0 mmol)/day in Yanomamo Indians (below the 1st percentile of adults in NHANES III) to over 10.3 g (450 mmol)/day in Northern Japanese (above the 99th percentile of NHANES III) (Oliver et al., 1975; Sasaki, 1964).

There is a lack of data on average sodium intakes during pregnancy and only a few studies have reported sequentially measured urinary sodium excretion. The median sodium intake for pregnant women was 3.48 g (151 mmol)/day in NHANES III (Appendix Table D-8). In the Calcium for Prevention of Preeclampsia study (CPEP), dietary recalls were obtained on the 4,589 participants at recruitment (during weeks 13 to 21 of gestation) (Morris et al., 2001). Daily sodium intake of the 3,125 nonhypertensive pregnant women averaged 4.24 g (184 mmol)/day. Mean sodium excretion in three small serial studies were approximately 2.3 to 3.5 g (100 to 150 mmol)/day (Brown et al., 1988; Steegers et al., 1991b; Wilson et al., 1980). Of note, the populations in the CPEP study