Chew On This: Too little salt bad for the heart?
Remember the ‘Butter bad, margarine good – oops, wrong: margarine bad, butter good’ debate? Now salt is the victim of contradictory research.
Salt is an essential nutrient. But governments in the developed world, worried that too much salt brings on cardiovascular disease (CVD), have been leading initiatives to reduce salt consumption. Last April, following other studies, the British Medical Journal published research showing reducing salt intake could cut the long-term risk of CVD by up to 35 percent. Now, just over a year later, the Journal of General Internal Medicine has published a study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in the US that too little salt could increase the risk of CVD.
They studied 8,699 people over 30 and their salt intakes, and decided those whose consumption was the lowest were 80 percent more likely to die from CVD than those in the highest percentile.
Confused? Join the club. But you don’t have to be: the majority of consumers’ salt intake comes from processed foods. So don’t eat processed foods. They're not as good as home-cooked dishes on any level. Or agitate to force manufacturers to pay attention to the levels of salt in processed foods. In Britain, the food industry has reformulated its processed foods recipes to such a degree that British salt intake was reduced last year by 2,000 tons.
With summer almost upon us, it’s an easy time to get used to using salt properly. Stick to cooking fresh vegetables. Grains and legumes will supply your protein needs more cheaply than meat, poultry and fish. But wherever you look for your source of protein, if you cook anything from scratch instead of buying pre-cooked meals, you can regulate your salt intake. Invest in some of the really interesting ‘finishing’ salts now around and sprinkle it over your food once you’ve finished cooking it.
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