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It’s Okay to Love Salt!

     

    Are you devoted to salting your food? Me, too. So many things just don’t taste right without it: potatoes, rice, cooked vegetables…  pretty much everything. Even hot cocoa tastes better with a smidgen of salt! This is why salt is pretty much the indispensable ingredient, as far as professional chefs are concerned. There is a biological reason that salt tastes good to us: our bodies require sodium in order to function properly. So it’s a good thing that salt has the amazing ability to intensify flavors we like, while helping to mask ones that we don’t. Additionally, a wee bit of salt enables our taste receptors to detect flavors that otherwise might escape us.

    But there’s more good news on the (tasty, salt-dusted) horizon: For the vast majority of people, salting our food is actually good for us. Recent research (published in The Lancet, no less) showed that health risks are not increased by salt consumption unless that consumption exceeds 5 grams per day. Five g is 2.5 teaspoons, which might sound like a relatively paltry amount, but just try measuring out two-and-a-half teaspoons of salt and dumping it in your palm, and you will find that it actually is a lot of salt.

    These research results fly in the face of decades of medical advice advocating restriction – sometimes drastic restriction – of sodium as a way to stave off heart disease. The study involved 94,000 people of various ages in 18 different countries for an average of eight years. Researchers found an increase in heart attack and stroke only in populations where sodium consumption exceeded 5 g per day. In fact, most of the communities studied averaged far less salt than that – 1.5 to 2.5 g per day. Additionally, the researchers found that cardiovascular disease decreased in populations that consumed more potassium, which is one of the reasons it’s so important for us to eat plenty of potassium-rich foods such as vegetables and fruit. (Sorry, meat-lovers; the vegetales must outweigh the carne.) You can read more about the study by following the link below:

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809202057.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news%2Ftop_science+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+Science+News%29

    Martin McDonnell, co-author of the report, sums the study up nicely: “There is no convincing evidence that people with moderate or average sodium intake need to reduce their sodium intake for the prevention of heart attack and stroke.”

    Isn’t it satisfying to find out that something you love is actually good for you?

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