Crunching salt numbers really does add up to obesity

The more salt you eat, the more water you pee out.

Your body needs to keep the water levels up so following a salty meal, so you invariably feel thirsty.

The “best” way to quench your thirst is an ice cold sugar laden cold drink.

The “fat” thirst

It has been postulated that quenching that thirst is what is putting on the pounds as society has largely abandoned the idea of drinking water.

Crunching the numbers

Researchers decided to “crunch” the numbers in an attempt to verify the hypothesis. The research was published in Journal of the American Heart Association a few years ago.

Using data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey in Great Britain (1997) which accurately ^# recorded the salt and fluid intake of 1600 children between the ages of 4 and 18 for 7 days.

# Everything the kids ate and drank was weighed rather than just asking them to remember what they had imbibed. Recall is usually not very accurate because people often “forget” the in between snacks and things when keeping dietary records.

The original data showed that children who ate less salt did in fact drink less fluid. Quantifying this effect gave an estimate that :

1 gram of salt cut from the diet reduced fluid intake by 100 grams per day

The kids drinking less, drank less sugar-sweetened drinks so crunching the numbers left the following “formula”

1 gram of salt cut from the diet reduced consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by 27 grams per day

So what ?

Hopefully you haven’t glazed over because of a number overload yet.

Well let’s do the health conscious thing and try cutting down on the salt just a little.

Let’s imagine we could cut the salt intake by 3 grams a day by replacing the Cornflakes with old fashioned porridge and the bangers and mash with a piece of beef.

This would translate into a decrease of 2 sugar sweetened drinks each week.
This would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kcal per week.

It’s not a big number but the number do ALL add up.

250 kcal extra a week ends up being 13 000 kcal a year – good for a couple of extra pounds if you’re not moving much.

Cut salt or drink more water

The message is clear. You can’t have your salt and drink your soda cut one or the other to beat the obesity epidemic.

PS. Cutting your salt take more than banning the salt cellar from the table because most of the sodium we eat is “hidden” in processed foods.

Connection elucidated between obesity, salt sensitivity and high blood pressure – Georgia Health Science University News and Information

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