saltrax.com Blog

A research study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (http://www.annals.org/content/early/2010/02/25/0003-4819-152-8-201004200-00212.full?aimhp) and recently featured in several news articles showed that even small to moderate reductions in sodium intake for the United States population could prevent almost one million heart attacks and strokes over the lifetime of adults aged 45  - 85. The study, which built on the previous research, created a mathematical model to look at the impact of reducing sodium intake.  Even more, the US stands to save almost 32 billion dollars in medical costs just by reducing dietary sodium. The results are very impressive and provide one more piece of evidence that the time has come for policy changes to address the amount of sodium added to processed, packaged and restaurant foods.

As I have stated in my testimony before the FDA panel looking at the regulation of sodium in 2007 and in my testimony before the committee making recommendations for Healthy People 2020, we must address this problem now, before another person becomes chronically ill or even dies because of a simple modifiable lifestyle change. I’m going to restate part of my testimony to the FDA below because I feel so strongly about this issue:

It is imperative that we address this significant public health problem now with a thoughtful, planned, and strategic approach. Food labels regarding salt must describe things in ways that have meaning and can be understood by most consumers. Policies that guide food labeling are a critical strategy to producing these changes. If food labeling and policy do not clearly show that eating salt is a problem with a consequence, then the problem will continue to be invisible and the significant human and financial costs will continue to grow. As a human cost, it is not only the loss of life that is concerning. As we prevent cardiovascular deaths through improved technology, we also need to focus on what is the quality of life that we are saving. If people cannot access the low-sodium foods necessitated by their chronic conditions, then their quality of life will be decreased; these people are essentially isolated from our society and are at risk for becoming clinically depressed.

In order to truly change salt eating behavior and promote optimal health, it is our responsibility as clinicians, researchers, and policy makers to find ways to make salt eating behavior more visible and thus measurable to the person consuming it. Policy makers hold the critical responsibility to produce meaningful guidelines that shape the environment in which the consumer shops, makes food choices, purchases, and consumes the food products containing sodium. These policies will support our efforts to promote and reinforce healthy dietary behaviors.

For the past month I’ve been part of an interesting eating experience shared with another member of the San Diego Child Obesity Initiative  www.ourcommunityourkids.org

When a member of our volunteer work group came to our meeting last month and asked for volunteers to eat only “Natural” foods for 30 days, I readily accepted the challenge . . . then immediately thought to myself, “Well, how do we define natural?” The food manufacturers have obscured the definition of natural to their own ends, so that by now, I and I think most other consumers in the U.S. are totally confused by the term. So, we set out to try to set some criteria and parameters for our new way of eating and we plan to share our findings with our group soon. My eyes, which I thought to be quite sensitive to food labels and added sodium, were opened by what I have learned. Through this new way of eating, I’ve lost almost 3 pounds and an inch from my waist and it’s not even been a full month! I’ll share what I’ve learned very soon in this blog so that others can hopefully use my learnings and share with others what they learn too.

My main thought is that it’s time to take the term “Natural” back from the marketing industry and define it for ourselves and then use this new operational definition to teach others how they too can eat a healthy diet within their daily routine lives without having to change too much about where they shop, how they cook meals (or not), etc. What I’ve learned is that something I thought as too difficult to change on a daily basis is actually quite easy and doesn’t cost any more money or time than previously!

Several people have shown me a recent article published in the New York Times by author John Tierney called, “When it comes to Salt, No Rights or Wrongs. Yet.” Although I strongly feel that discourse and discussion about controversial issues are very necessary, I have my doubts that Salt is as highly a controversial topic as the Salt Institute and its followers who don’t understand the issue like to define it. Over the past 30 or more years, there have been many studies showing the negative effects of a high salt diet.

I’m not going to get into discussing studies in this blog, however ask any doctor or nurse and their experience with seeing patients who suffer from the dietary effects of too much sodium and you will hear countless stories of suffering. Especially when, at the end of their disease states, patients are told to reduce their dietary sodium intake to improve the quality of their remaining lives (good advice too late received) – it is nearly impossible to eat out in a restaurant or buy processed foods without overdoing the sodium. How do we expect these people to live? Do we want them to try to learn to cook if they’ve never cooked when they are busy coping with a chronic disease that causes weakness and fatigue? The time to learn to cook low sodium and eat a lower sodium (even moderate sodium is better than what we have now) is when people are y0ung and healthy. Even better, would be to teach children when they are young how to eat a healthy diet and learn to like the taste of whole foods without just adding salt unthinkingly because using herbs requires thought and creativity.

Someone sent me an excellent article from, Well and Good NYC about the New York City initiative to lower dietary salt. The article can be found at:

http://wellandgoodnyc.com/2010/02/18/licking-salt-how-to-tell-if-your-organic-natural-vegetarian-food-is-too-salty/

The author talks about how even organic, natural, vegetarian foods can be high in sodium. For example Muir Glen Organic Garden Vegetable Soup has 960 mg of sodium per serving – - that is 10 SalTrax points or almost 1/2 of the daily allowed salt content for someone following the limit of 2,300 mg/day. If you are following a 1,500 mg sodium/day diet (for those over 50, those with high blood pressure, and/or African American) then this is nearly 3/4 of your daily allowed salt intake!

Nothing beats reading food labels and being aware of the places where sodium hides in food; and this example above shows that even foods labeled “healthy”, “organic”, “vegetarian” or “natural”, etc. can still have enormous amounts of sodium. In order to lick sodium, we all must be food detectives and be ever vigilant about the places it hides.

Please send me the results of your efforts to find “hidden sodium”. I’d love to share with others where you find sodium hiding in your diet.

February 1st – 7th is World Salt Awareness Week! I applaud this effort, however I feel it is also very important to keep this issue in the forefront of people’s minds every day of the year.

Check out this link for important information about salt from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention:

http://www.cdc.gov/DHDSP/library/sodium.htm