Food, diet and health news since 2004.
Section archive
Minerals
Using NHANES data from 2005 to 2008, CDC found 47.6 percent of Americans aged 2 and over meet the criteria to hold sodium to 1,500 mg a day, and 98.6 percent of them exceed it. Among the rest, 88.2 percent took in more than the 2,300 mg limit.
Minerals
Americans eating a lot of sodium and little potassium were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause and twice as likely to die of a heart attack, in a CDC, Emory and Harvard analysis of NHANES data. Intake figures came from participants' recall of what they had eaten.
Minerals
Belgian researchers followed 3,681 people for about eight years and found cardiovascular deaths clustered in the group excreting the least sodium: 4.1 percent, against 0.8 percent among the highest excreters. Sodium excretion did not predict total deaths or non-fatal cardiovascular events.
Minerals
CDC's analysis of 2005-2006 NHANES data found only 9.6 percent of US adults kept sodium within their recommended limit: 5.5 percent of those advised to stay under 1,500 mg a day, and 18.8 percent of other adults under 2,300 mg.
Politics
A Salt Institute release on a Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology analysis of 19,151 subjects across 33 countries, which found habitual sodium intake runs 2,800 to 4,600 mg a day. The authors argue physiology, not public policy, sets that range.
Cancer
An Italian case-control study of 230 gastric cancer patients and 547 controls found people in the top quartile for vitamin E, alpha-carotene and beta-carotene were 50, 48 and 58 percent less likely to have the disease, while all quartiles above the lowest sodium intake had about 2.5 times the risk.
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