Armor Up, America – We’re in the Salt Battle of Our Lives

Recently, news concerning the nation’s salt intake brought some tough love to American consumers. Tough enough to prompt the author of the study, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to be quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, “This is not good news”. True enough. It is in fact alarming news, proving that when it comes to salt, the term “silent killer” is no misnomer.

Adults, the study indicates, should eat less than one teaspoon of salt each day, while 70% of the population should eat less than 2/3 of a teaspoon. But in fact, only 1 in 18 people meet this goal. With heart disease and hypertension numbers on the climb, it looks like a true battle royale, with NaCl donning the armor.

It’s Not the Salt Shaker

This insidious mineral stepping into the gladiator arena is sodium chloride. Used traditionally for food preservation, it is something necessary for human life in small quantities and harmful – even deadly – in excess. It is a major player in the fight against high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.

Decades ago, putting down the salt shaker may have been solid advice for maintaining good health. But today, minding the shaker is old school. If you are a human being consuming food in 2010, you know your salt issues originate elsewhere:

  • Processed food: tomato sauce, soups, condiments, canned food, prepared mixes…
  • Restaurant foods
  • Cold cuts / meats
  • Baked goods
  • Grain-based products

In addition, some medications include sodium, and we can even be taking in a significant amount sodium from natural sources, such as well water. In fact, the Mayo Clinic determines that a mere 6% of salt originates from the shaker while 77% of salt intake comes from processed food. The rest comes from salt added while cooking and natural sources.

We could shake all day long and never reach the amount we get from processed of prepared food.

Salt is Part of the Golden Trinity

We have talked about David Kessler here in previous posts, and the recent salt news has catapulted him into the mainstream. Currently, more of the public is hearing about his mission to understand and expose the golden trinity of taste for what he feels it is: a concoction created by food companies to seduce the brain chemistry into making us eat and crave more. The recipe? Fat, sugar and salt that bathes food in startling amounts, in the most appealing and scientifically proven combination. Arguably, it’s the NaCl gladiator’s most powerful weapon.

It’s really no wonder that 1 in 3 U.S. adults has high blood pressure, and the government estimates that 9 in 10 will develop it in their lifetime. We at risk, according to this study, are often eating twice their daily requirement of sodium.

Salt Reform

FDA’s anti-salt initiative begins later this year and would eventually lead to legal limits on the amount of sodium allowed in food. Its plan would be phased in over ten years and would not be voluntary. Restaurants are targets as well, and while some have said they will voluntarily reduce salt in items on the menu, they may also be required to visibly post amounts. Recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg began a national campaign to cut salt levels, and food companies were recruited to comply. Starbucks and Heinz were one of 16 that agreed to cut salt levels in their products.

While regulation debates rage on, some eschew regulations and prefer to enter the gladiator ring for a one-on-one. For those, there’s one dagger of knowledge that can help us get medieval on salt starting now.

Sodium is an Acquired Taste

Your secret weapon is knowledge. We know, for instance, that salt is an acquired taste. It’s acquired by the processed and prepared foods we eat over our entire lifetime and the result is that low sodium foods taste bland.

But as we take steps to reduce sodium in our diets, our taste sensitivities will adapt. We will appreciate foods for their true flavor. The process of adapting takes about 8-12 weeks – that’s the amount of time it takes for a shift in taste preference to occur in most people.

Give yourself 8-12 weeks.

The American Heart Association offers these tips to get you started.

  • Choose fresh, frozen or canned food items without added salts.
  • Select unsalted nuts or seeds, dried beans, peas and lentils.
  • Limit salty snacks like chips and pretzels.
  • Avoid adding salt and canned vegetables to homemade dishes.
  • Select unsalted, lower sodium, fat-free broths, bouillons or soups.
  • Select fat-free or low-fat milk, low-sodium, low-fat cheeses and low-fat yogurt.
  • Learn to use spices and herbs to enhance the taste of your food.  Most spices naturally contain very small amounts of sodium.
  • Add fresh lemon juice instead of salt to fish and vegetables.
  • Specify how you want your food prepared when dining out. Ask for your dish to be prepared without salt.
  • Don’t use the salt shaker. Use the pepper shaker or mill.

Now that you are armed with tactics, remember that they must be combined with strategy. In the end, according to Kessler, we must change our relationship with food by understanding that hyperpalatable foods that use hyperportions of salt are not our friends. They should be understood as harmful and be duly replaced by healthier foods and their own positive associations – until we get to the point where the golden trinity of taste is no longer what we crave.

Best of luck, gladiators. Let the games begin.

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Why You Should Know About Metabolic Syndrome

According to studies from the Journal of the American Medical Association, metabolic syndrome affects up to 25% of the American population.

25%.

This startling statistic means that one in five people are experiencing significant health risks due to this condition. What is this insidious disease called metabolic syndrome, and why is it deserved of so much attention?

What is Metabolic Syndrome?

Once known in the medical community as “syndrome X” or “insulin resistance syndrome”, metabolic syndrome has the dubious distinction of becoming a recognized diagnosis in its own right. The syndrome poses such a significant health risk because it is really a cluster of conditions that work together to seriously degrade health and invite mortality. These conditions, occurring together, increase your risk of heat disease, stroke and diabetes and can lead to a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome:

  • Increased blood pressure: A blood pressure reading of higher than 120 / 80.
  • Elevated insulin levels: Insulin helps to regulate the amount of sugar in your body, and insulin resistance can elevate risk of disease.
  • Excess body fat around the waist: Obesity in general puts you at risk for disease, but having an “apple shape” – more fat around the middle – means elevated risk.
  • Abnormal cholesterol levels: that is, low HDL levels (your good cholesterol) and high LDLs (your bad).

Don’t these conditions alone have adverse health effects? You bet. High blood pressure increases your risk of serious disease, as does elevated insulin levels and high cholesterol. But the combination of these diseases can make your risk of disease skyrocket, leading to the very serious diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.

If you already know you have at least one of the conditions described above, it may be that you have others without being aware of it. Visiting a doctor to see if you should be checked for the others is a good idea. The diagnosis of metabolic syndrome isn’t great news, but knowing you have the disease can get your doctor on the case, put your level of risk in perspective, and make your need to make aggressive changes in your lifestyle a priority.

What’s the Connection to Metabolism?

You’ve heard people who are thin and seem to eat a lot described as having a “naturally high metabolism”. Most of us know metabolism has to do with our rate of burning calories, but our understanding stops there. What is “metabolism” really?

It’s true that our metabolism is affected by what we eat and our physical activity. But metabolism is the term used to refer to several processes that concern converting food and other substances into energy and other metabolic byproducts. It’s an important function because how our body uses food to maintain itself, repair damage, heal from injury, and aid in digestion and absorption of nutrients depends on the process of metabolism.

One of these metabolic processes includes how our body responds to insulin. Insulin controls the amount of sugar in our bloodstream. If we are insulin resistant, glucose cannot enter our cells as easily. Our body then responds by churning out more insulin and increasing the insulin level in our blood, which can lead to diabetes. It also interferes with how our kidneys work, leading to higher blood pressure.

Greater weight, especially around the middle, means a higher risk of insulin resistance, because fat interferes with the body’s ability to use insulin. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are the hallmark risk factors for many diseases and conditions, including type 2 diabetes. These conditions together create a perfect storm of damage when it comes to our metabolic processes.

Combating Metabolic Syndrome

If you are one of the “one of five” diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, aggressive lifestyle changes will likely be the Rx. While medication is often necessary for those with this diagnosis, changes in diet and exercise can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems related to metabolic syndrome. If you are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome or you are at risk for this diagnosis because you have one of its component conditions, a three-prong attack is the path to prevention.

1-Medication

Many individuals with metabolic syndrome are treated for elevated blood pressure and insulin resistance with medication. Medication can be the first order of business for patients with hazardous levels; other patients may find that their doctor turns to medication if lifestyle changes are not having the desired effect. Also, doctors might recommend a daily aspirin to reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke.

2-Diet

Diet is truly at the heart of mitigating the symptoms of this disease. Many professionals recommend the Mediterranean diet for those at risk. This diet is rich in vegetables, whole grains and fish, and is rich in good fats like olive oil. It has become a popular dietary recommendation because unlike other diets, it can be enjoyable, isn’t overly restrictive, and as a result, it can be sustained over the long term – the key to any lifestyle change. And, according to industry sources, recent studies have shown that when compared to a low fat diet, people on the Mediterranean diet have a “greater decrease in body weight, and also had greater improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other markers of heart disease — all of which are important in evaluating and treating metabolic syndrome.”

3-Exercise

Exercise completes the prevention triumvirate when it comes to metabolic syndrome. Studies indicate that simply decreasing fat (through liposuction, for instance, or divine intervention) won’t have the beneficial effects of actually moving to lose the weight. In fact, even those who lose no weight through exercise still benefit from it when it comes to this disease. There is a beneficial effect of exercise on blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and insulin sensitivity – the perfect combination of benefits for metabolic syndrome.

Antioxidants & Metabolic Syndrome

Recent discoveries attribute potential health benefits to antioxidants such as anthocyanin, anti-inflammatories and other natural compounds found in the deep blue pigment of fruits like our own wild blueberries. Working with wild blueberry fruit compounds known as anthocyanins, Mary Ann Lila, Ph.D., from North Carolina State University, Plants for Human Health Institute led a team of researchers that demonstrated that blueberry phytochemicals helped alleviate hyperglycemia in rodent models, a condition associated with diabetes and metabolic syndrome. You can read the research in the May 2009 issue of Phytomedicine.

Ongoing studies like Dr. Lila’s that are focused on metabolic syndrome can open the door to even better ways to hone in on prevention, and with luck, kick that 25% statistic into the single digits where it belongs.

You can learn more about metabolic syndrome at the American Heart Association. You’ll also find more about the risk factors and complications at the Mayo Clinic.

The Key to Your Heart: New Heart Health Guidelines Focus on Food, Not Nutrients

The International Food Information Council Foundation’s website Food Insight published an interesting interview recently with Dr. Rachel Johnson. Johnson is Dean and Professor of Nutrition at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont, and member and chair-elect of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee. She discusses some new dietary metrics released by the The American Heart Association that have been designed to maintain ideal cardiovascular health.

Johnson’s message includes a focus on food intake, including types of foods and calories, rather than nutrients. That’s because nutrient-based messages are hard for people to translate into action, she said. The new directives also aim to address a messaging disconnection. In the past, recommendations have included terms such as “moderating” intake or “minimizing” certain foods, and such vague rules for healthy eating were not resonating with consumers the way hard numbers could, said Johnson.

The guidelines for good heart health include a recommendation of no less than 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day. Other guidelines include eating fish and whole grains, and cutting sodium intake. Another important principle for heart health, according to Johnson, is cutting sugar, and the guidelines also include strict calorie allowances for sugar, particularly sweetened beverages.

A New Kind of Sugar High

In the spirit of concrete measurements, the article sites research by the American Cancer Institute that says Americans consume 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. That translates into 335 calories per day – a high number for a country struggling with issues of obesity and the diseases that accompany it. New guidelines from the AHA dictate a limit of 100 calories per day for women, and 150 for men – that’s a mere 6 teaspoon and 9 teaspoons respectively.

Sugars in foods can be seemingly ubiquitous in our diets, and such a ceiling on sugar intake can seem strict. But Johnson doesn’t vilify sugar; instead she suggests that those who want more sugar should simply move more. “We haven’t said eliminate added sugars from your diet. I feel that the wise approach is to use your added sugars allowance in a way that enhances the flavor and the palatability of otherwise nutritious foods (e.g., putting a little maple syrup on your oatmeal),” she said.

Other positive sugar intake can include its use as an incentive for kids to eat well. A little flavoring in milk, for example, can encourage children to incorporate milk into their diet. The hope is that such dietary trade-offs will be well worth the net nutritional gain, so kids can maintain their own heart health for years to come.

Find out more about nutrition and heart health by reading the interview.

Food Insight is a publication of The International Food Information Council Foundation, a foundation dedicated to the mission of effectively communicating science-based information on health, food safety and nutrition for the public good.