Young Men Consuming An Alarming Amount Of Salt
Young Swedish men are consuming at least double the recommended amount of salt according to a study carried out by the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
“It’s alarming that young Swedish men are consuming so much salt, and something needs to be done about it. We can really only speculate on the consequences of such a high salt intake later on in life, in the form of cardiovascular diseases and stroke,” says Lena Hulthén, Professor in Clinical Nutrition at the Sahlgrenska Academy.
The study included almost a hundred men in their twenties. Urine samples from all participants were analysed over a 24-hour period. The participants also answered questions about their eating habits. The urine samples showed that the young men were consuming at least two times the World Health Organisation’s recommended daily intake of six grams.
“High salt intake can lead to high blood pressure, but we couldn’t detect any connection in our study. High blood pressure doesn’t usually develop until a person is in their 30s or 40s, since the kidneys’ ability to deal with the excess salt deteriorates with age,” says Lena Hulthén.
Salt in food is found largely in ready meals such as pizza and frozen meat hash, but it is also in bread, cheese, meat sandwich fillings, fish products, breakfast cereals and other products produced by the food industry. An earlier Danish study has shown that only a tenth of the salt that we consume comes from our own salt cellars. Read more
Brown Rice And Cardiovascular Protection
Rice is generally thought to be a healthy addition to the diet because it is a source of fiber. However, not all rice is equally nutritious, and brown rice might have an advantage over white rice by offering protection from high blood pressure and atherosclerosis (“hardening of the arteries”), say researchers at the Cardiovascular Research Center and Department of Physiology at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
New research by Satoru Eguchi, Associate Professor of Physiology, suggests that a component in a layer of tissue surrounding grains of brown rice may work against angiotensin II. Angiotensin II is an endocrine protein and a known culprit in the development of high blood pressure and atherosclerosis.
The findings are contained in a study conducted by Dr. Eguchi and his colleague at the Temple lab, Akira Takaguri. The research team is also composed of Hirotoshi Utsunomiya and Ryohei Kono of the Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Wakayana Medical University, Wakayama, Japan; and Shin-ichi Akazawa, Department of Materials Engineering, Nagaoka National College of Technology, Nagaoka, Japan. Dr. Takaguri will present the team’s findings at the annual 2010 Experimental Biology conference in Anaheim, CA on April 24-28. This presentation is sponsored by The American Physiological Society. Read more