Why eating too little salt is bad for your health, and how salt took the blame for processed foods
New research says not enough sodium content in our diet can be as bad as having too much. It can lead to weight gain, chronic kidney disease, elevated bad cholesterol and increased blood pressure and heart rate
Salt has become so complicated. Once upon a time, the worst you’d hear about it was poor Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of the stuff.
But now, every time we contemplate lifting the shaker to sprinkle on our eggs, each time we glance at a food label or eat a pickle, we feel guilt pangs, hearing echoes of “too much sodium causes (insert negative medical condition here).”
High sodium content found in popular luncheon meat, canned sausages, Hong Kong watchdog warns consumers
The Centre for Food Safety urges Hong Kong people to minimise salt or sodium-containing seasonings, even removing salt shakers and soy sauce bottles from our dining tables, and to limit our average daily intake of sodium to 2,000 milligrams, about one level teaspoon of salt, or 5g, as the World Health Organisation recommends. The average Hongkonger has about double that amount. (To put this into perspective, a McDonald’s grilled chicken burger in Hong Kong contains about 1,205mg and a medium order of fries contains about 253mg.)
The New England Journal of Medicine reported that reducing sodium by 400 milligrams a day in the United States could not only save 28,000 lives, it could also save US$7 billion in annual health care costs.
Then we have Dr James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist who wrote a book called The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong – and How Eating More Could Save Your Life. Too little salt, he says, can lead to weight gain, chronic kidney disease, elevated bad cholesterol and increased blood pressure and heart rate.
