**Acknowledgements**

*Lifestyle and Epidemiology - The Double Burden of Poverty and Cardiovascular Diseases...*

in processed foods in SA. [162] Unfortunately we did not measure dietary sodium intakes in all our communities. Bread was identified as the largest contributor to salt intakes and that 41.0% of the South African population has a high salt intake. [162] Bread also consistently appeared in the top 20 most commonly consumed foods among our study communities [26, 29–31, 33, 34, 38, 43, 44, 57]. Another contributor to sodium intake in SA is sodium glutamate that is used as a condiment, [163] as well as salt in soup, gravy and spice mixes and powders, margarine and atchar, a spicy condiment, [163] biscuits/cookies, and breakfast cereals [164]. Stock cubes are regularly used for flavouring meat and vegetable dishes in SA [165, 166]. High stock cube consumption has also been observed in these communities by the

In the studies reported among various communities, low education and employment status were observed as well as poverty in a large majority of the respondents. The scientific literature shows a strong association between poverty and CVD [163]. Poverty is an underlying factor of food insecurity that often results in poor dietary intakes that were observed in our communities. Many of the dietary CVD risk factors were present in large proportions of the communities. The literature is clear

**58**

**Figure 2.**

*Cardiovascular risk factors prevalent among children, adults and the elderly.*

authors.

**6. Conclusions**

We thank the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Vaal University of Technology (VUT) for financial support. Replamed (Cornel Pretorius) provided technical support, Prof A Egal, Centre of Sustainable Livelihoods (VUT) staff member and team members from the CARE research group for their operational support.
