For many years we have known that salt is bad us. In fact, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have been recommending that Americans cut back on their salt intake for decades. The guidelines advise that lowering that amount of sodium we eat would decrease the growing burden of high blood pressure and heart disease. And through this, it could even prevent deaths.
It’s recommended that we should have no more than a teaspoon of salt per day as a young, healthy person. The level should be around half for people over 40 or those who already have high blood pressure.
Even though the government has been pushing the idea of reduce levels of salt for decades, salty foods have been making a comeback, even for so-called “healthy” chefs like Jamie Oliver. It is becoming more regular that researchers and doctors are starting to doubt the science behind the “recommended daily levels” of sodium intake. According to many, the guidelines just aren’t backed up by the evidence.
A study published in the Journal of Hypertension analysed data from over 6,000 people. The results failed to find an association between lowered salt intake and a lower risk of heart attacks, strokes or death.
Another study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, went even further, suggesting that a low-salt diet might even be bad for us. The authors reported that the less sodium subjects excreted in their urine, the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease.
These findings may be at the more extreme end of the scale, but the fact is that the evidence is divided on how bad salt is for us.
Comments are closed.