 |
| A CDC study found that 9/10 American kids eat too much salt. Image: Shutterstock |
As young students across the country head back to school
this month, parents and guardians should be mindful about what they are packing
in school lunches, and cooking at home for dinner. According to a new report
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an astonishing
nine out of 10 American kids eat more salt than they should, which raises their
lifetime risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
Many grown adults have a complicated relationship with salt.
Home cooking encourages the use of spices and seasonings when preparing meals
with local, nutritious ingredients, but many Americans don’t have the time or
the budget to cook every meal from scratch. Chips, packaged snacks, and
ready-to-make meals like frozen pizza and boxed macaroni and cheese are
affordable for larger families and fast and easy to make. Unfortunately, they
are also loaded with sodium and processed ingredients.
I’ve talked before about my own personal experiences
unpeeling myself from the processed food salt craze. Moving away from packaged
food and cooking more at home can be a hassle—especially if you’re not used to
it—and sometimes our palates take a while to adjust to less salt. In my
experience, though, once my body did adjust
to less salt, I stopped feeling like it needed to be added. Nowadays, I only
infrequently use salt while cooking – and really only a dash or two when I do
decide to use it.
But I didn’t make the choice to use less salt—in fact, I
didn’t even think about it until we just had to cut it out of the family diet
because of my dad’s health issues. Many adults and children don’t realize just
how prevalent salt is in the foods we eat—and it’s becoming a huge problem.
Based on the CDC’s findings, about 43 percent of the salt
ingested by children comes from the ten foods they eat most often. According to
WebMD, “these foods include pizza, bread and rolls, cold cuts and cured meats,
savory snacks, sandwiches, cheese, chicken patties and nuggets, pasta dishes,
Mexican dishes, and soups.” For busy families, many of these foods are ideal
because they are appealing to children and easy to make.
One of the most important takeaways from the CDC study is
that the high ingestion of salt a child can affect health later on.
Explains Dr. Erica Brody, “Though kids do not have the same
short-term risks from high-salt diets that adults do, as with all aspects of
childhood nutrition, the foods our children eat now affect the choices they
will go on to make as adults.” Dr. Brody works in the department of pediatrics
at the Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mt. Sinai in New York. Named for prominent
hospital donor Henry R. Kravis, the Children’s Hospital is ranked among the
top medical institutions in the world.
Dr. Brody and many other childhood nutrition specialists,
including CDC Deputy Principal Directory Ileana Arias, agree that it is vital
for young people to start learning about healthy, nourishing foods early, to
prevent bad habits down the road. “This includes excessive sugars, fats, and,
of course, salt as well,” Dr. Brody says, of the unhealthy ingredients that are
heavily marketed towards children.
Sarah Sproule, artisan salt maker and owner of Urban Sproule
in NYC recently told
Kinfolk, “Now we
see convenience food companies […] loading their chips and crackers with enough
salt to make them shelf-stable for years. People are concerned about salt
intake—I like to call it the “sodium craze.” But health conditions related to
sodium intake haven’t come out of garnishing with your favorite artisanal flake
salt: They’ve come from consuming packaged foods loaded with overly processed
sodium,” of the difference between garnishing meals at home with salt and
exclusively eating heavily salted, processed foods. Arias agrees, noting that
families can serve more fresh fruits and vegetables and by preparing foods that
contain less salt, rather than opting for ready-made meals like pizza, when
possible.
