It is no secret that too much salt is equivalent to a harmful association for our health, since it can increase blood pressure, the risk of heart attack, stroke … but two new studies have now identified a new consequence of a high intake of salt: obesity.
Dietary guidelines recommend less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day on average, however the average is estimated to be well above this figure. The fault would not be exclusively that we go overboard with the salt shaker when it comes to dressing meals, but for processed foods and meals outside the home that would represent 75% of our total sodium intake.
According to experts, the amount of salt present in a certain food can influence the amount we eat, causing those people who are more sensitive to products with fatty flavors, are more likely to eat foods of this type and therefore increase the risk to suffer obesity.
In experiments carried out by the researchers, salt turned out to play a key role in describing how pleasant or attractive a food was. Thus, the more salt the foods contained (sweet or salty), the better they were rated – in terms of taste – by the participants and the more the consumption of fatty foods increased.
” The strong effect of salt on flavor may indicate that salt is a major driver of fatty food intake and reflects the challenge of reducing salt while maintaining palatability,” the authors state.
They also discovered that “when a lot of salt is added to food, the body’s biological mechanisms are blunted and we end up eating more food. This can cause us to eat more fatty foods and over time, our body adapts or becomes less sensitive to fat, which in turn leads to eating more to obtain the same feeling of fullness, tipping the balance towards obesity ” , clarifies Russell Keast, leader of the work.
Adding salt to high-fat foods therefore has the potential to speed up this process. This explosive combination nullifies our body’s ability to recognize when we are full and causes us to eat more, becoming a toxic mixture for our health.
The studies have been carried out by researchers at the University of Deakin (Australia) and published in the journals The Journal of Nutrition and Chemical Senses.
