Don' Get So Salty

The salt debate is like coffee. It seems to change every week as to whether it's healthy for you or not.
Seems as though The bottom line is to regulate and not to overdo it as your body is made up of part salt, it is an essential nutrient. Learn more from our guest article below.

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Salt in your diet.

Many people regard salt as just another item on the list of "bad foods" that should be avoided in our diet. They mistakenly believe that excessive salt, or sodium, intake will lead to high blood pressure, or hypertension.

When people talk about salt in the diet they are usually referring to table salt or sodium chloride. In fact, sodium chloride is just one of many salts that are in our food.

Chemically a food is described as a salt when it shares common chemical characteristics. We can recognize these chemicals on food labels when we see the tags --ide (as in chloride), --ate (as in borate) or --ite (as in sulfite). If you take a look at the labels on prepared foods you can understand why we don't need to add table salt to our diet. If we don't have a diet high in fresh foods there's a good chance we've already consumed far more salt than we need.

Interestingly, research has shown that salt has little or no effect on most people with normal blood pressure as well as many people with hypertension. There are, however, many individuals who are salt sensitive. They react unfavorably to salt in any form because it puts strain on the kidneys, increasing blood volume. If the arteries are unable to dilate sufficiently to accommodate this increased blood volume, blood pressure will rise.

Depending on who you ask, most health promotion educators recommend that adults limit sodium intake to 1000 milligrams per day--that's about one teaspoon. To reduce the amount of salt in your diet, minimize the amount of canned and processed foods, smoked meats, condiments, chips, and soft drinks you consume.

Of course, it's always a good idea to discuss health concerns with your physician, but moderation seems to be the key in most dietary matters, including salt.