Three recent studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine have analyzed the nutritional content of restaurant and processed foods, raising questions about consumer, industry and government efforts to curb calorie, sodium and fat consumption. Authored by Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson and colleagues at George Washington University and Northwestern University, the first study examined changes in the sodium levels of identical processed and restaurant foods from 2005 to 2011. Michael Jacobson, et al., “Changes in Sodium Levels in Processed and Restaurant Foods, 2005 to 2011,” JAMA Internal Medicine, May 2013. Using data collected by CSPI, researchers reportedly found that “sodium content in 402 processed foods declined by approximately 3.5%, while the sodium content in 78 fast-food restaurant products increased by 2.6%.” Although the study also noted that salt content decreased by 30 percent in some products and increased by 30 percent in others, “the…
Tag Archives salt/sodium
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently issued a report assessing the scientific evidence behind government recommendations that adults in the general population reduce dietary sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams per day and that certain groups of people at a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) reduce their salt consumption to 1,500 mg per day. At the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the IOM committee responsible for the report focused on new studies examining sodium’s direct effect on health outcomes as opposed to previous research that used high blood pressure as “a widely accepted biological predictor of risk for CVD and stroke.” Based on this new research, the IOM report concludes that while the latest science still supports salt reduction recommendations for the general population, there is little or no new evidence to back the 1,500 mg/day recommendation for specific population subgroups, which include…
An abstract recently presented at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions reportedly linked high salt intake to 2.3 million heart-related deaths per year worldwide. According to a March 21, 2013, AHA press release, researchers analyzed data on adult sodium intake from 247 surveys conducted between 1990 and 2010 “as part of the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study, an international collaborative study by 488 scientists from 303 institutions in 50 countries around the world.” They then performed “a meta-analysis of 107 randomized, prospective trials that measured how sodium affects blood pressure, and a meta-analysis of how these differences in blood pressure relate to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease compared with consuming no more than 1,000 mg per day of sodium, which the researchers defined as an optimal amount of sodium for adults.” Based on their findings, researchers reported…
Two groups of researchers have allegedly provided evidence that sodium induces the differentiation of CD4 T cells responsible for immune responses, thereby raising concerns about the role of salt intake in autoimmune disorders. Both published in Nature, the two studies in question suggested that “a high-salt diet can enhance the differentiation of a class of immune cells called TH17 cells, and exacerbate disease in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis called experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE),” according to a concurrent news item. In addition, the authors apparently found that mice lacking serum glucocorticoid kinase 1 (SGK1), which plays a role in EAE, had reduced neuropathy and some protection from a high-salt diet. In particular, the first study examined how increased sodium chloride concentrations in vivo “markedly boost the induction of murine and human TH17 cells,” purportedly showing that the TH17 cells generated under these conditions “display a highly pathogenic and stable phenotype characterized by…
California Assembly Member Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) has introduced a bill (A.B. 682) that “would prohibit chicken or turkey sold in any state-owned or state-leased building at food concessions and cafeterias from being ‘plumped’ in any way.” The legislation defines “plumped” poultry as any such product injected with “saltwater, chicken stock, seaweed extract, or some combination thereof… to increase its weight and price.” “The practice of ‘plumping’ chicken or turkey can increase the sodium content by up to 500 percent,” states the bill, which would take effect January 1, 2014, or upon the expiration of existing vending and concession contracts. “Fresh, natural chicken should have no more than 70 mg of sodium per four ounce serving, whereas plumped chicken can contain up to 400 mg sodium. The average household of four people, because of ‘plumping’ chicken or turkey, spends approximately $127 per year on saltwater.”
The American Heart Association (AHA) has issued a presidential advisory calling for renewed efforts to reduce sodium consumption among Americans. Published ahead of print in AHA’s Circulation, the advisory summarizes the latest evidence backing its recommendation that consumers reduce their sodium intake to less than 1,500 milligrams per day. To this end, the new report builds on a 2011 presidential advisory that linked excess sodium consumption to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke. It also attempts to debunk what the advisory describes as “[r]eports of paradoxical inverse or J-shaped associations between sodium intake and CVD and stroke risk and a meta-analysis [that] have been widely misinterpreted as disproving the relationship between sodium and CVD and stroke risk and have received considerable media attention.” According to AHA, these publications “have stirred controversy and confusion in the popular press and the general population,” leading some to question the need to…
School districts in California, New Mexico and Illinois have reportedly publicized their intention to ban “Flamin’ Hot” Cheetos® snacks from campus vending machines and lunches over concerns about the product’s nutritional content. According to media reports, the schools in question have described the snack item as “hyperpalatable” with each bag containing 26 grams of fat and one-quarter of the recommended daily amount of sodium. As University of Michigan clinical psychologist Ashley Gearhardt further explained, “Our brain is really hardwired to find things like fat and salt really rewarding, and now we have foods that have them in such high levels that it can trigger an addictive process.” “It’s something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,” Gearhardt said. “Going…
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has published a series of studies and commentary on the purported health effects of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages. The American Beverage Association issued a statement contending that studies focusing “solely on sugar-sweetened beverages” as an alleged cause of obesity “or any single source of calories, do nothing meaningful to help address this serious issue. The fact remains: sugar-sweetened beverages are not driving obesity. By every measure, sugar-sweetened beverages play a small and declining role in the American diet.” The studies included Janne de Ruyter, et al., “A Trial of Sugar-free or Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Body Weight in Children,” (concluding, “[m]asked replacement of sugar-containing beverages with noncaloric beverages reduced weight gain and fat accumulation in normal-weight children.”); Cara Ebbeling, et al., “A Randomized Trial of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Adolescent Body Weight,” (concluding, “[a]mong overweight and obese adolescents, the increase in [body mass index] was smaller…
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers recently published a study finding that sodium intake among U.S. children and adolescents “is positively associated” with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and risk for pre-high blood pressure and high blood pressure (pre-HBP/HBP). Quanhe Yang, et al., “Sodium Intake and Blood Pressure Among US Children and Adolescents,” Pediatrics, October 2012. According to the study, which used 24-hour dietary recalls to estimate the sodium intake of 6,235 children ages 8-18 years, the subjects consumed an average of 3,387 milligrams of sodium daily. The results also apparently indicated that the associations between sodium intake and increased SBP and risk for pre-HBP/HBP “may be stronger” among the 37 percent of participants who were overweight or obese than among those who were not. While in normal-weight children every 1,000 mg extra of sodium evidently corresponded with a one-point rise in SBP, in obese or overweight children…
A recent study has reportedly concluded that a diet high in sodium is associated “with increases in biomarkers of endothelial dysfunction, specifically serum uric acid (SUA) and urine albumin excretion (UAE),” leading to hypertension. John Forman, et al., “Association between Sodium Intake and Change in Uric Acid, Urine Albumin Excretion, and the Risk of Developing Hypertension,” Circulation, June 2012. Using data from the Prevention of Renal and Vascular End Stage Disease (PREVEND) cohort, researchers apparently analyzed SUA levels in 4,062 non-hypertensive participants and UAE levels in 4,146 participants. The results evidently showed that not only are high sodium diets associated with greater increases in SUA and UAE, but that over the long term they may lead “to endothelial dysfunction and vascular damage, generating a biological state in which continuance of the high sodium diet may produce hypertension (a sodium amplification loop).” In particular, the study’s authors found that participants who consumed…
