Is Cutting Salt the Key to Curbing Childhood Obesity?

I agree with what you're saying. On the other hand, if this spurs anyone to move to a diet where they deliberately choose low sodium (and as a consequence often less processed) food... that's a good thing.

i was a fat kid in middle school and high school not because of the salt content (although water retention will occur even in adolesence), it was, as i've mentioned before, because my mother simply didn't think there was an issue with letting me have freedom in the form of food. i think the key here is exactly "After all, kids do have the choice to drink water if they are thirsty, do they not?"... if mom and dad have more nutritious snacks that they, too, snack on with the kids, of course the kids would be more inclined to eat the same snacks.

If high sugar, high calorie drinks aren't available to kids then that would be a good start. And that would include what some people think of as juice as well as pop. Many parents seem to let their kids drink attrocities such as fruitopia and sunny d in the mistaken idea it's "juice" - it's just pop without bubbles. I don't have juice in the house except maybe when someone is having a birthday party. Just tell my kids that they can eat an apple or orange and drink a glass of water and that should pretty much cover it. Last time I checked you could quench your thirst after eating something salty with water.

I took a bunch of kids from my seven-year olds class on a field trip yesterday and I'm still upset with what MOST of the kids had in their lunch bag. My personal favorite was a pizza "lunchable" (kid threw out the pizza part and just ate the chocolate bar), a pre-packaged brownie-like thing, two small sticks of what appeared to be a pepperoni-like product, and A BAGGIE FULL OF COLD MACDONALD'S FRENCH FRIES, cold columns of congealed fat and starch, that he said was his "treat" - don't know what made the brownie and the chocolate bar not his "treat", maybe he thought they were the healthy part. He had a bottle of water, which he had two sips from and then chucked in the garbage, not the recycling, which further upset me. All around me kids were eating the most appalling things. Taking bad choices out of school cafeterias or vending machines is one thing, but how do you get through to parents that this is stuff you wouldn't feed a goat?

It is depressing to hear what some parents consider a suitable packed lunch. I'm no fan of the "nanny state" but perhaps schools could take a lead in encouraging kids to understand the basics of good nutrition?

And I'm with Mike and the commenters above -- salt is one piece of the puzzle, yes, but not the sole or even major one. I suspect that kids with diets high in salt are getting most of the salt from processed junk -- along with lots of extra calories, sugar and fat. So a high intake may be a symptom of a poor diet overall, rather than a cause of weight gain in itself.

Ali

As an former obese child, I can tell you my mother was maniacal about keeping salt away from us kids, we even had salt free pretzels. We also didn't have normal soda in the house.

This was not the 'magic bullet' in my case. Just one data point.

This study drives me nuts. I can see parents across the Western world requesting salt-free fries at McDonald's in order to keep their child slim… but still ordering Coke with their Happy Meal.

I don't buy this hypothesis at all. It's the carbs and sugar that do the damage. The salt just comes along for the ride in the processed junk.

Mike, I agree with your post 100%...
the study should have focused more on the health effects of a diet high in sodium, rather than how it makes you thirsty.

Ummm.... stretching a bit.
Sodium isn't good for you, but it hardly makes you fat. Maybe that junk in soda and liquid Calories had a little more to do with it, y'think?

Sodium has a negative effect on blood pressure, but no impact on fat storage. This is simple biology process with insulin. Insulin won't communicate with sodium.

I saw the mentioning of your blog in March's Real Simple and included your info in an entry own blog, www.SquidKid.org. Keep up the great work -- I like your alternative approach to an evergreen topic. If you ever need to know anything about swimming, stop by.

Fitness Fanatic is right. Sodium levels while directly affecting water retention (not fat), do not spike insulin and cause the hormones in the body to signal the storage of blood sugar into the fat cell....as that is what fat gain is. I ate salt on my pizza as a kid and was skinny....but I never drank soda and played outside 1-2 hours a day. That and my parents took responsibility to feed me the right foods for dinner....not crap high in sugar and fat.

Salt, Sugar and monosodium glutatmate are all added to foods to enhance their taste - in the case of manufactured foods, food manufacturers have only one real goal - for you to choose their product over the competitors, and to come back and buy more. Thus, all manufactured foods (including fast food restaurants and many other restaurants too) are highly flavor enhanced to encourage you to eat too much. In a way, yes, salty food does lead to more fluid intake - and if the fluids are soft drinks laden with sugar, your carb intake skyrockets. But it is not just that - salty, sugary and MSG-laden food, etc generally "taste better" - they seem to trick us in to eating past when we are full (and per Good Calories, Bad Calories, such carb intakes likely results in feelings of hunger soon thereafter due to the blood sugar - insulin connection). Consciously reducing one's salt, sugar and MSG intake - in other words, eating real food - might lead to reduced food intake. (It has for me and I lost 24 pounds.)

Childhood obesity has a lot more to do with kids eating crappy food than it does with just elevated salt levels. When I was a kid, my mom had to follow a very low sodium diet because it helped her Meniere's disease, so I grew up eating a lot of bland food. We didn't keep soda in the house (and if we ever did buy it, it was always diet) and we were only allowed juice if it was orange juice or prune juice. I'm pretty sure it's the processed foods that are making kids fatter; that INCLUDES the sugary sodas and "juices" that they're drinking. Heck, if my parents had fed me nothing but salty chips, I would've been able to quench my thirst with water and that's about it. Parents just need to step it up and not buy the sugary drinks period...there is no nutritional value to them at all.

this brings up a good point that americans do eat too much salt in their diet, which is not a good thing and does lead to high blood pressure, but as many have mentioned, you have the option of having water if you are thirsty instead of high calorie soda, or other drinks, such as fruit juice and sport drinks. I am far from perfect, and probably do eat too much salt (lots of soups, lean cuisine, and deli meats) but I am thin because I drink water and only water. Nothing else. Those high calorie drinks really do add up and I think overall american just needs to make smarter food choices and be more active.

From what I understand, (and I know you will all feel free to correct me if I am wrong!!), eating too much salt does NOT lead to high blood pressure. It is my understanding, that what some big study decades ago discovered, is that if you ALREADY have high blood pressure, the situation COULD BE exascerbated by consuming excess sodium. It is also my understanding that this result was never conclusively proven, but that ever since everyone and their dog, including many in the medical profession, have concluded that high salt = high blood pressure, less salt = lower blood pressure. Even my wise doc says jokingly, every time she takes my blood pressure, "you just go out and eat all the salt you want!"

The link below is not where I got this info from originally, but in searching for some sort of backup for what I was saying, I found this site and it's kind of fun:
http://www.junkscience.com/jan01/saltwars.html

Agree with the original post. Obviously! It's not the salt that is the culprit, but these syrups that are being consumed.

Salt and water go together, and in fact are necessary to the body. Especially after fluid loss, such as from sweating. Why would anyone attempt to drink something different?

Processed foods in general and snack foods in particular are loaded with way too much sodium.

This is true for most fast food burgers, canned soup, and corn and potato chips.

It is no accident that Frito-Lay is a division of Pepsi.....make them thirsty and then drown them in high fructose corn syrup used to sweeten Coke and Pepsi.

Too much salt is deadly for people with high blood pressure.

I have low blood pressure (100 over 70) so I don't really worry about salt. However, I stay away from most processed foods because I'm always on the lookout for transfats and MSG, so I don't think I end up getting most of the "hidden salts" people get in frozen meals, canned soups, etc., except for ham, which is a processed oversalted food I'm never giving up.

I don't think I eat too much salt though, as everyone who eats my cooking reaches for the salt shaker immediately and complains about it. I can't eat more than 4-5 potato chips before the corners of my mouth feeling like they are sore from the salt in them, and I don't see people complaining chips are too salty.

On hot days, I've found that a helpful salty food that doesn't taste salty I can eat when I feel my blood pressure drop is a dill pickle, so I always keep pickles in the fridge.