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Is salt really so bad for you?
By Christina | March 13, 2009
As a fitness professional I know that salt is bad for the body and that it should be limited to 2300 milligrams a day for adults and 1500 to 2200 milligrams for children aged 9 to 13. What I did not realize is how little that actually is. 2300 milligrams is one teaspoon!
When you think about one teaspoon of salt it seems like that’s a lot. Who would ever consider pouring that much salt onto a meal? My guess is not many, but the danger lies not in the shaker but in the foods we eat that have been saturated with Na Cl prior to arriving on our table.
Don’t get me wrong, we do need some salt in our diets to keep our muscles pumping and our nerves firing away but we are, on average, getting double the daily requiremnet and that can lead to the diseases associated with high salt intake – hypertension and heart disease.
The body reacts to salt or actually to the sodium in salt by producing more blood – bloated anyone – and in turn the heart must work harder to deliver that blood throughout the body. The next time you sit to a meal, think twice about the salt you are ingesting and try to put the shaker down once in a while.
Topics: Nutrition | No Comments »
