Testifying at a government hearing, the Center for Science in the Public Interest urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enforce tougher regulations for sodium in food, The Washington Post said Friday.

   The American Medical Association says that 150,000 lives could be saved in the U.S. annually if salt in processed foods and restaurant foods were cut in half, CSPI said in a release.

   "Very few people dispute that Americans get way too much salt from processed and restaurant foods, and that that excess promotes hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, kidney failure, and early death," CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said in a statement. "While the FDA has historically declined to challenge companies to lower high sodium levels, it is increasingly hard for FDA officials to ignore the calls to action made in recent years by the medical community."

   The group said the average person in the United States consumes 4,000 mg of sodium each day, twice the recommended maximum. One study suggested that 77 percent of sodium comes from processed and restaurant food.