tuticorin salt
Saturday, November 2, 2013
salt and hypertension
Chloride in food salt found critical to reducing hypertension mortality
by The Salt Institute -
The latest scientific research confirms the critical role of everyday table salt in our diets.
For years now, we have seen mounting evidence demonstrating that reducing salt consumption in out diet leads to increased sickness and death. Ignoring such a strong body of evidence that contradicts the current recommendations for salt points to the political nature of the ongoing salt debate. Since the scientific evidence keeps coming in, always pointing to an increased health risks associated with reduced salt consumption, it becomes folly to continue pretending this association doesn’t exist.
The latest evidence confirming this relationship between reduced salt consumption and increased sickness and death, comes at us from an entirely different direction. Writing in the September 2013 edition of the journal Hypertension, authors McCallum, Jeemon, Hastie et al., studying an enormous group of 13,000 hypertensive patients show that the chloride portion of salt (sodium chloride) can also be an independent predictor of risk.
Referring to chloride, one of the authors, Dr. Sandosh Padmanabhan states , “….. our study has put the spotlight on this under-studied part of salt to reveal an association between low levels of chloride serum in the blood and a higher mortality rate……It is likely that chloride plays an important part in the physiology of the body and we need to investigate this further.”
The full study can be found in Hypertension.
reducing salt
Reducing salt in food ‘makes no sense’
by The Salt Institute -
At the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2013 Congress, researchers from McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, found that only certain subgroups will actually experience benefits from restricting the sodium in their diet and concluded that the sweeping recommendations to reduce salt were pointless. A report on this work by Shelly Wood, “Population-wide Sodium Guidance ‘Makes No Sense’ in Most Countries” makes it clear that the majority of scientific evidence, does not support people reducing salt in their food. This paper follows several other similar papers over the last three years that indicate the least negative health impacts fall in the consumption range of 2,800 – 6,000 mg of sodium day, well above the current recommendations of 1,500 – 2,300 mg sodium per day.
salt iodization
Public health: ‘Salt iodisation should be strengthened’
by The Salt Institute -
The results of a health evaluation drive revealed on Saturday that iodine deficiency disorder had been mostly controlled in Sahiwal.
According to the results, Layyah had the worst indicators.
The survey was taken in 16 districts of south Punjab. The evaluation and review drive was headed by Health Services Director Muhammad Jameel Chaudhary.
Executive district health officers and focal persons of the districts attended the session.
Chaudhary said the Universal Salt Iodisation (USI) programme should be strengthened to reduce iodine deficiency disorders. He said the USI programme had shown success in combating iodine deficiency disorders.
“There is a need to strengthen the monitoring framework to improve the quality of salt iodisation and achievement of sustainable results,” he said.
He stressed the Health Department should also expand the scope of the USI programme.
Multan Health Services Director Muhammad Rafi said there was a lot to be done to improve health practices in the region.
He said it was encouraging that several districts in the USI programme had shown positive indicators.
Micronutrient Initiative (MI) Programme Manager Khawaja Masood Ahmad said in the National Nutrition Survey 2011 had showed that 79 per cent people in the province were consuming iodised salt, compared to only 17 per cent in 2001.
USI Programme Manager Munawar Hussain said Pakistan was among the few countries where iodine deficiency disorder was still a public health problem.
He said clinical research had shown that iodine deficiency was the major cause of mental impairment, brain damage and 13-15 per cent low IQ in children.
He said pregnant faced several problems women due to iodine deficiency.
He said making iodised salt available for households was an easy and cost-effective strategy to eliminate iodine deficiency disorder globally.
Ambreen Zahra and Waheed Akhtar from the World Food Programme and the USI field officers from Micronutrient Initiative also attended the meeting.
The participants of the meeting reiterated their commitment to continue district-level monitoring and implementation of strategies so that adequate salt iodisation level were ensured.
The federal government had set a target of 2015 for ending iodine deficiency disorders in Pakistan
food for thought
Food for thought: Cutting back on salt may cause you to eat more
(BPT) - Our bodies naturally crave salt, a necessary nutrient, and research shows that we
gravitate to the amount we need for our bodies to function properly. Salt deficiency has been
linked to a host of health concerns, including insulin resistance, increased risk of heart attacks
and reduced cognition. But what if eating less salt also increases your weight by making you eat
more?
"Over the past 30 years, an interesting phenomenon has occurred: the rates of obesity have
dramatically gone up but the amount of salt we consume has remained fairly stable," says Mort
Satin of the Salt Institute. "Food producers have been lowering the amount of salt they use, under
pressure from the government and consumer activists, so we are either eating a lot more food to
get the salt we need or have drastically lowered our activity levels, or both."
In the U.S., research shows that people have been consuming about the same amount of salt on a daily basis for 50 years. Andaround the world most people eat about the same amount of salt - about 3,500 mg/day, according to the World Health Organization.
It appears that we all, when free to choose, eat enough to keep us in a "safe range" between 2,300 mg/day and 4,600/mg a day,according to medical researcher Bjorn Folkow.
"It stands to reason that if the amount of salt in food is lowered, we will eat more to get to our safe range," Satin says. "More foodequals more calories and that means more weight gain, unless we increased our physical activity to burn off the extra calories."-
This isn't news to those who raise livestock. According to Dr. Rick Rasby, professor of animal science at the University of Nebraska,cattlemen intentionally control the amount of salt in cattle feed to either reduce the cost of feed or to fatten cows up before sale. Ifthey add more salt to the feed, the cows naturally eat less. If they reduce the amount of salt, then the cows will eat more.
This instinct is driven by the body's physiology designed to maintain an efficient cardiovascular system, according to researchers atthe Washington University School of Medicine. This vital life-sustaining system is found in fish, reptiles and all mammals. This systemis so robust that it contains multiple failsafe mechanisms. The body will actually retain salt if you try and cut back too much. Of courseany excess salt is simply washed away when you drink water through the natural process.
The irony is that for most of us there is no need to reduce the amount of salt we consume, Satin says. Years of scientific evidence,including recent research by Canadian scientists published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), shows thateating the levels of salt recommended by the American Heart Association or the U.S. government would actually cause harm.
Current recommendations from the American Heart Association are as low as 1,500 mg/day, an amount so low that Europeanresearchers, also writing in JAMA, found it would increase the risk of heart attacks and early death.-
"The unintended consequence of the ongoing salt reduction experiment may be an increase in obesity," Satin says. "More research isneeded, but meanwhile, individuals may want to focus on a balanced diet and regular exercise and remember that lowering the salt infood may make you want to eat more."
salt as an ingredient
Salt is an important ingredient in your good health. In fact, no electrolyte is more essential to human survival than salt.
The sodium you get from salt is what allows nerves to send and receive electrical impulses. It is what makes your muscles stay strong. It’s what makes your brain work. It’s actually what makes every cell in your body function.The body of evidence in favor of salt is strong, too.
Studies from the Journal of the American Medical Association show that people with the highest sodium intake have the longest lives.
The American Journal of Hypertension agrees. They say there is no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduced the risk of heart attacks or strokes. In fact, reducing salt to levels recommended by the U.S. government can cause harm and decrease life expectancy.
Even Scientific American has called for an end to the war on salt, saying that the drive to limit our salt intake has little basis in science.
Just something to think about. And not something to be taken with a grain of salt.
Evaporated Salt
Evaporated Salt
Salt purity is defined as the percentage of sodium chloride in the final crystal; a higher number means fewer impurities. The impurities are other minerals, not necessarily detrimental to the salt’s intended use, but not contributing to the benefit of salt. Solar salt and rock salt both can attain 99% salt purity, but often have far less. Sometimes, far, far less. The purest grades of salt are “evaporated salt.”
Most of us use a table salt which is evaporated salt. It is manufactured using a system of “pans” which boil away the water from salt brine. The brine, which can itself be purified, is crystallized under controlled conditions, often in plants that resemble food processing plants where much of the evaporated salt is destined. The process has two steps: obtaining the brine, usually from a solution mine, and then thermally reducing it to crystallized salt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)