Table 2.

Recommendations for estimating usual dietary sodium using urinary excretion of sodium

Setting	Recommendation
Current average population intake	Single 24‐h urine collection in randomly selected individuals over a series of days that reflect the usual population dietary pattern
Current annual population intake	Single 24‐h urine collection in randomly selected individuals over a series of days that reflect the usual population dietary pattern over a year
Individuals current usual intake	At least 3 non‐consecutive 24‐h urine collections collected over a series of days that reflect the usual short‐term variations in dietary pattern (eg, weekday vs weekend day and usual daily variation in sodium intake)
Individual's long‐term usual intake	Multiple 24‐h urine collections over the duration of the long‐term study

24‐h urine sodium collections represent approximately 93% of the sodium ingested.