Today’s MoM (Merchant of Menace) health headlines blared out, “Diets High in Salt Could Deplete Calcium in the Body.” (http://tinyurl.com/brrsj89 and http://tinyurl.com/cae6oxv ) It was even reported that way throughout Asia. While this important issue is worthy of study, the reported conclusions of the research appeared to be driven more by an anti-salt ideology than by actual evidence. The giveaway was the statement in the University’s press release, “This is significant because we are eating more and more sodium in our diets, which means our bodies are getting rid of more and more calcium. Our findings reinforce why it is important to have a low-sodium diet and why it is important to have lower sodium levels in processed foods.”
Wrong!
The actual evidence shows that our salt consumption has remained unchanged since the 1950s (Bernstein & Willett, Am J Clin Nutr, 2011). Therefore, any growing impact resulting from calcium depletion cannot be attributed to increased salt consumption. In fact, we now eat less salt than we did 200 years ago (http://tinyurl.com/cmaaq4d ). The reason is that refrigeration has replaced salt as the primary means of food preservation.
What makes the press release even more bizarre is that the actual publication in the American Journal of Physiology stated that all the experimental research was carried out on opossum cells and genetically modified mice! The rest of the story on calcium loss in humans was pure hypothetical speculation! No fooling, opossum cells and GM mice. Would you say that the headline, “Diets High in Salt Could Deplete Calcium in the Body,” was somewhat exaggerated? Do you have any reason to trust what the University press releases say in future? Better to go back to the original study and eliminate all the gratuitous speculation and opinion and stick with the evidence. You will be better informed.
You can read many more exaggerations in the salt:health debate at http://tinyurl.com/7v48267 , where you will also have reference to all the peer-reviewed studies.
