Researchers found that always adding salt to food cuts more than two years off life expectancy for men and a year and a half for women. This does not include seasonings during the cooking process. The study did not definitively rule out other factors, such as eating salt as a substitute for a generally less healthy lifestyle, but the team behind the work said the evidence was compelling enough for people to consider avoiding seasoning their meals. “To my knowledge, our study is the first to assess the relationship between added salt in food and premature death,” said Professor Lu Qi of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, who led the work. “Even a modest reduction in sodium intake, by adding less or no salt to food at the table, is likely to lead to significant health benefits, especially when achieved in the general population.” The findings were based on research involving more than 500,000 participants in the UK Biobank study, who were followed for an average of nine years. When they took part in the study between 2006 and 2010, they were asked, via a touchscreen questionnaire, if they added salt to their food and how often they did so. Salt intake is difficult to monitor accurately because many processed foods contain high levels of salt, and direct measurement with a urine test does not necessarily provide a snapshot of total intake. About 70% of sodium intake in Western populations comes from processed and prepared foods, with 8-20% coming from table salt. However, added salt is a very good indicator of a person’s preference for salty-tasting foods, so the team focused their analysis on this metric. Compared to those who never or rarely added salt, those who always seasoned their food had a 28% increased risk of premature death. At age 50, men and women who always added salt lived 2.3 years and 1.5 years less, respectively. Other factors that could affect the results include age, gender, ethnicity, deprivation, body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, diet and medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, were taken into account. Professor Annika Rosengren, a senior researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, who was not involved in the research, said that while some of the health advice was clear – there are no downsides to quitting smoking – for salt there was an optimum level. meaning that it cannot be completely removed from the diet. It is difficult to identify the “sweet spot” in terms of health for each individual. “So far, what the collective evidence on salt seems to show is that healthy people who consume normal levels of common salt don’t need to worry too much about their salt intake,” he said. For this group, balancing salt intake with a diet rich in fruits and vegetables should be a priority. However, those at high risk of heart disease should probably cut back. “Not adding extra salt to already prepared foods is one way to achieve this,” he said.
