Salty

A study based on more than 500,000 people demonstrates that people who always season their meals can cut years off their life "Our study is the first to assess the relation between adding salt to foods and premature death,” said Prof Lu Qi of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, who led the work.

Roughly 70 percent of sodium intake in western populations comes from processed and prepared foods, with 8-20 percent deriving from salt added at the table. However, adding salt is a very good indicator of a person’s preference for salty tasting foods, so the team focused their analysis on this measurement.

Compared with those who never or rarely added salt, those who always seasoned their food had a 28 percent increased risk of dying prematurely. At the age of 50, men and women who always added salt had a life expectancy 2.3 years and 1.5 years shorter respectively.

Prof Annika Rosengren, a senior researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, who was not involved with the research, said that for salt there is an optimal level, meaning it cannot be removed from the diet entirely. It is hard to pinpoint the “sweet spot” in terms of health for any given individual.

“So far, what the collective evidence about salt seems to indicate is that healthy people consuming what constitutes normal levels of ordinary salt need not worry too much about their salt intake,” she said.

For this group, counterbalancing salt intake with a diet rich in fruit and vegetables should be a priority. However, those at high risk of heart disease should probably cut down.

“Not adding extra salt to already prepared foods is one way of achieving this,” she said.

Source : adding salt to foods and hazard of premature mortality