Is Eating Lots of Salt OK Now? A New Study Says Yes

A new study about salt and heart attack risk is causing a big stir in health care circles this week. We have a link to the Reuters report on the study on our Food & Exercise News page for you.

The European study found people who consumed high levels of salt were not more likely to have high blood pressure and that those same salt eaters were less likely to die of heart attacks than were people who followed low-salt diets.

All that, of course, turns conventional health wisdom about salt consumption on its head. For someone like me, who obsesses about salt intake because of my family’s history of heart attack and high blood pressure, it leaves me wondering exactly what doctors really know about all this and how much they’re putting forward best guesses.

The study has gotten widespread criticism from the health establishment, which just makes me more concerned about whether it might have some truth to it. It will be interesting to see where this controversy goes next, hopefully more studies will be done to either confirm or refute this study’s findings.
John