Salt in the Diet
The substance we call salt is the chemical compound sodium chloride. Salt also contains small amounts of other trace elements including calcium, magnesium and iodine.
Salt in the diet comes mainly from processed foods such as crisps, nuts, cheese, pickled vegetables, sauces and smoked foods. It is also added to food during preparation, cooking and at the table. Small quantity occurs naturally in some foods. Nobody is quite sure exactly how much salt we need to eat, but it is relatively small amount.
Salt in children’s diet
Babies need very little salt. Their kidneys are not well enough develop to get rid of extra salt. The main problem is hypernatraemia, which causes dehydration with symptoms of irritability, poor appetite and sometimes convulsions. If hypernatraemia is not treated it can cause permanent brain damage and can be fatal. Children who have high salt intakes also develop a taste for salty foods which is hard to shake off in later life.
Salt and health
There is some weak evidence that eating too much salt is connected with high blood pressure. In countries where peop0le eat a lot of salt there is high blood pressure, and where they do not eat a lot of salt high blood pressure is not a problem. This has not, however, been shown within countries. For examples, in the United Kingdom it has never been shown that people who eat a lot of salt are more likely to have high blood pressure than those who do not. The mechanism by which salt might cause high blood pressure is not understood either, although some evidence suggests that it is the sodium component which people react to. If this so, care may need to be taken over the consumption of other sodium salts on food. These include sodium nitrate, sodium caseinate, monosodium glutamate and a number of others.
Salt in the Diet
