The debate over salt continues
Is salt bad for you? Is it harmful for everyone or just some people? How much is too much?
These long-standing questions are once again in the news, thanks to a new initiative by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) which is urging the FDA to enact new legislation to require food manufacturers to reduce the amout of sodium in packaged foods. Let's sidestep the question of whether it is the government's (or the CSPI's) role to police what we put in our mouths and focus on the actual underlying question: Is salt really bad for you?
As Richard Fogoros, M.D., writes:
Reading the medical literature on salt has become uncomfortably like reading the Bible: no matter what odd notion you care to espouse, you’ll be able to find something in there to support it. There seems to be little hope that anything approaching an objective resolution of the salt issue will ever be reached – at least among hypertension experts.
(Click here to read Dr. Fogoros's great article, "Is salt restriction necessary," in its entirety.)
The big health agencies and organizations (AHA, AMA, NIH, etc.) have long maintained that restricting sodium is good health policy, on the grounds that salt intake is linked to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and death. However, not everyone who eats a high sodium diet gets hypertension.
Only about 10 to 25% of the general population are sodium sensitive; for these people consuming too much sodium may indeed increase their risk of cardiovascular disease and death, even if they have normal blood pressure. (Among those with high blood pressure, about 60% are salt-sensitive.) If you are salt-sensitive, limiting your salt intake is important.
But what about the rest of us? Why can't we eat as much salt as we want? After all, it's fat-free, cholesterol-free and calorie-free. (Can't they leave us ANY pleasures?!)
Well, for one thing, there isn't an easy way to determine whether or not you are salt-sensitive. Having high blood pressure (or relatives with heart disease) increases the likelihood that you are, as does being African American and over 60. But remember that many sodium-sensitive individuals have normal blood pressure--and are still at increased risk.
So, some would argue that it makes sense for everyone to reduce their sodium intake, just in case. And I would simply point out that the American diet is needessly high in sodium.
About 70% percent of the sodium in the American diet comes from packaged and prepared foods--which are, by and large, ridiculously over-salted. The more of these foods you eat, the higher your tolerance for salt becomes. So one way to reduce the sodium in your diet is simply to prepare more foods from scratch.
An example: An order of Beef and Broccoli from the typical Chinese take-out typically contains one and a half day's worth of salt (3200 mg) in a single dish. Alternatively, you can make this quick and easy Beef and Broccoli (recently featured on our new Healthy Dinner Tonight daily recipe feed), with just 515mg per serving!
Pop your own popcorn. Toast your own tortilla chips. Cook up your own soup or pasta sauce. Even when you salt your home-cooked food to taste, you will be consuming much less sodium. You'll also be improving your taste acuity and enjoyment.
(If you are on a salt-restricted diet, you can personalize your settings on ND to reflect the amount of sodium that is healthy for you.)
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Posted by: Frederick Grose, MPH, CIH | Dec 4, 2007 3:24:32 PM
The Linus Pauling Institute for Micronutrient Research for Optimum Health at Oregon State University has a nice review of these and other issues at http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/sodium/. The review has been Updated in December 2007 by Victoria J. Drake, Ph.D., of the Institute. I would recommend this site for those interested in a bit more background.
The Pauling Institute Recommendation emphasizes the adequate intake of potassium, "at least 4.7 gram/day". See also their review for potassium, http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/potassium/. (Both reviews have a link to the 2004 report of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Science on Dietary Reference Intakes for these nutrients.)
I have found that it is very difficult to reach the recommended daily intake for potassium on a 1500-Calorie per day diet, and by eating fresh foods, I find that my sodium intake is most often below the recommended intake of 1.3 gram/day. I would like to see a future article that discusses such a situation.
I suspect that we may overemphasize single, daily intakes, and may not remember the intermediate and longer-term measures of nutrition (other than body weight). This also suggests an interesting article. The topic is made more interesting and complicated, no doubt, by the kinetics of nutrient absorption, utilization, storage, and elimination. So maybe this is an aspect that we could consider a little at a time, as we learn more about foods and nutrition.
For the future, I'm wondering if there may be some features that NutritionData might offer that would help the public monitor their intermediate and longer-term nutritional intakes. I like that you have re-established the feature that allows one to save the Total Consumption report to a .CSV file (for importing to Excel, for example), and that is a good beginning, as we can save the data we might want to analyze.
Thank you for all your services!
