Salt makes your children fat!
Reducing the amount of salt that children eat could provide a short-cut to keeping them slim, British researchers reported on Wednesday.
They found that children who ate less salt drank fewer sugary soft drinks and could reduce their risk of high blood pressure and obesity.
Writing in the journal Hypertension, they said this could lower rates of heart attack and stroke in later life.
“Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are a significant source of calorie intake in children,” said Dr. Feng He of St. George’s University of London.
“It has been shown that sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption is related to obesity in young people,” He added in a statement.
“If children aged 4 to 18 years cut their salt intake by half, there would be a decrease of approximately two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child, so each child would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kilocalories per week.”
One pound of body weight equals 3,500 calories.
He and colleagues analyzed data from a 1997 national survey of more than 2,000 people between 4 and 18 in Britain. More than 1,600 boys and girls had salt and fluid intake recorded in a diary, with everything they ate and drank weighed.
“We found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid,” He said. “From our research, we estimated that 1 gram of salt cut from their daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day.”
The children who ate less salt also drank fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks, and He predicted that a 1 gram reduction in salt would reduce sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption by 27 grams a day, after factoring in age, gender, body weight and level of physical activity.
He said parents should check labels, choose low-salt food products and not add salt during cooking and at the table.
“Small reductions in the salt content of 10 percent to 20 percent cannot be detected by the human salt taste receptors,” she said.
According to the American Heart Association, healthy adults should reduce their sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams or 2.3 grams per day. This is about 1 teaspoon of salt.
Americans and Britons consume up to 75 percent of their sodium from processed foods like tomato sauce, soups, canned foods and prepared mixes.
Salt may fuel child obesity
Salt-rich diets could be the key to why some children battle with obesity, University of London researchers say.
In a study of data on 1,600 children, they found that children eating a salty diet tended to drink more, including more fattening, sugary soft drinks.
They reported in journal Hypertension that halving the average daily salt intake of six grams a day could cut 250 calories a week from a child’s diet.
They called for further work by the food industry on reducing salt content.
One in five children in the UK is overweight and there are fears that this will contribute to a rising trend in adult obesity, heart disease and stroke in years to come.
Eating products high in salt tends to make people thirsty and it is known that in adults, a salt-laden diet tends to increase the amount of sugary soft drinks consumed.
First in children
This is the first study to see if the same effect was found in children.
The team from St George’s, University of London, looked at data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, conducted in 1997.
They used a sample of 1,600 four to 18-year-olds who had all had their salt and fluid intake measured precisely.
They found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid and estimated that one gram of salt cut from a daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day.
Approximately a quarter of those 100 grams would be sugary soft drinks, they predicted.
The researchers estimated that if children cut their salt intake by half - an average reduction of three grams a day - there would be a decrease of approximately two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child.
That, in turn, would decrease each child’s calorie intake by almost 250 calories per week.
They urged parents to check the salt content of their children’s meals and manufacturers to find ways to reduce this content.
They said reductions in the salt content of 10% or 20% cannot be detected by human salt taste receptors and do not cause any “technological or safety problems”.
Professor Graham McGregor, one of the paper’s authors and the chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health, said that while some manufacturers had acted to reduce salt levels in bread and cereals - the main sources of salt for children - there was still plenty left for the industry to do.
“Unfortunately some food specifically targeted at children has to be laced with salt otherwise it would be inedible, because it is made from mechanically-recovered meat,” he said.
“The salt levels in some of these products have been brought virtually up to the level of sea water.
“This is evidence of another, hidden way in which eating too much salt may harm the health of children and the industry needs to do a lot more.”
Label call
Dr Myron Weinberger, from the Indiana University Medical Center, wrote that reductions in salt and soft drink consumption in children, coupled with an increase in physical activity, could help reduce the “scourge of cardiovascular disease” in western society.
A spokesman for the British Heart Foundation said that better food labelling would help parents to choose healthier foods for their families.
“When children regularly swill down salty foods with sugary, calorie-laden soft drinks, it can mean double trouble for their future heart health.
“This report is yet more proof that children must be supported to make healthier food choices to avoid becoming obese or increasing their blood pressure.”
Salty Snacks Mean More Sodas for Kids
Kids who load up on salty meals and snacks get thirsty, and too often they turn to calorie-filled sodas. So maybe cutting back on the salt is a good way to cut the calories. That’s the idea coming from a British study published Wednesday in an American Heart Association journal.
Salt is “a hidden factor in the obesity epidemic,” said Graham MacGregor, a co-author of the study by researchers at St. George’s University of London.
And researchers say all that salt isn’t coming from the salt shaker: About 80 percent comes from manufactured food.
“Most people think that sodium comes from the salt shaker. The salt shaker contributes less than 10 to 15 percent,” said Dr. Myron Weinberger, a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.
“Fast foods, for example, are just loaded with sodium. Processed foods are all very high in sodium,” said Weinberger, who wrote an editorial related to the study published in the online journal Hypertension.
Not only could less salt translate to fewer soft drinks and therefore fewer calories, but a modest reduction in salt has already been shown to lower blood pressure, which increases the risk of later-in-life heart attack and stroke, researchers say.
Also, several studies have shown a link between sugary soft drinks and obesity in children.
Reducing salt in manufactured foods can be done gradually, without the public even noticing, said Dr. Feng He, lead author of the study and cardiovascular research fellow at St. George’s. She said a 10 to 20 percent reduction in salt isn’t even detectable.
“It’s important for the food industry to make a reduction,” she said.
The study suggested that cutting in half the amount of salt British children consume — a decrease of about half a teaspoon a day — would lead to an average reduction of about 18 ounces of sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week.
The study was based on diet data from Great Britain’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey. Researchers looked at 1,688 British boys and girls — ages 4 to 18 — over a seven-day period in 1997.
They noted that the amount of salt eaten might be underestimated in the study because it didn’t include salt added during cooking or at the table. The researchers also found that more than half the fluids drunk by the children were soft drinks, and more than half of those were sugar-sweetened.
MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at St. George’s, says the study results should apply to kids in the U.S. as well.
The United Kingdom began a government-led campaign to cut salt consumption in 1996 and researchers say more recent studies show that salt intake has already decreased.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is taking public comment until March 28 on a consumer group’s proposal to restrict the amount of salt in processed foods, among other options. And the American Medical Association has urged the government to require strong labeling of high-salt foods because if salt’s connection to high blood pressure and heart problems.
Experts note that it will take more than cutting salt to get overweight kids in shape: healthy eating and exercise are needed as well.
“It’s another piece of the puzzle,” said Dr. Pamela Sayger Cava, pediatric cardiologist at the Herma Heart Center at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. “The kids have to be active. They have to have more water, less soda. They have to eat less fast food.”
MacGregor said that parents should look at food labels. And they should make sure children eat more fresh fruits and vegetables without adding salt, which stimulates the brain to want more fluid.
“Thirst is one of the most basic instincts. When you get thirsty, you have to drink,” MacGregor said.
Keywords for this article:
- child obesity
- salty snacks
- salt-rich diets
- Fast foods