It would be rare to sit down at a restaurant and not be faced with two small shakers filled with pepper and everyone’s favorite, salt. Salt is a white crystalline substance that  is used for seasoning or preserving food. Salt somehow makes everything taste better. However, when is too much salt harmful to the body?

One of the most common reasons people tend to lay off the salt is because of its risks in raising blood pressure, or hypertension. Salt boosts blood pressure because it makes your body hold onto water and the extra water that is stored in your body is what causes this increase. The human body is amazing, and one of the most interesting aspects of it, is the way that blood gets pumped throughout the human body to give it the energy and oxygen that it needs. As the blood moves around the human body the strength of the pushing pressure on blood cells explains the concept of blood pressure. As a result, if this pushing is too strenuous  it leads to heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, death and disability. Not only can an excess amount of salt cause cancers of the stomach as well, it can also increase and worsen asthma symptoms. However, if used and consumed in moderation, salt can be beneficial to humans, but only in small amounts such as 1g a day, which equivocates to a pinch of salt.

In a 2015 survey titled “New Survey Names and Shames UK’s ‘Saltiest’ Family-Friendly Eateries and Warns of a New Generating of ‘Salt Addicts,'” studies show that over a quarter of meals surveyed contain 2g or more of salt per meal – which is the maximum amount of salt intake recommended for a whole day. The survey conducted included 218 children’s meals from 23 different eateries, and the results on the saltiest meal are as follows:

• Burger King Kid’s Veggie Bean Burger with Small Fries: 4.6g salt per serving
• Hungry Horse Pic ‘n’ Mix Large Ham (2 slices) with Mashed Potato & Baked Beans: 4.2g salt per serving
• Loch Fyne Seafood & Grill Bangers & Mash with Gravy: 4.0g salt per serving
• Beefeater Mr Noisy’s Bangers and Mash with Peas & Gravy: 3.9g salt per serving

As you can see, all of these restaurants, or fast food joints use an excessive amount of salt. This explains the reason for the constant craving of salty fast food when you’re on the run, or in need of something tasty. The amount of salt put into these foods is unacceptable and can potentially be causing many to gain weight, and to become very sick while also running the risk of raising blood pressure along with many other harms to health. The graph below shows example of the meals given to children in restaurants that have high salt content and low salt content. It is interesting to see different brand names that we are all familiar with on a graph talking about how bad these specific products are for children. Salt tastes good and the High Content examples sound better than the Low but by lowering salt intake, many can maintain a healthy lifestyle.

A study conducted at Harvard Medical School supports the claim that too much salt intake is harmful to the human body, however it also poses a different opinion. Statistics seen in the study state that, 40% of deaths were linked to the sodium intake that occurs in individuals under the age of 70,  the average sodium intake for humans was nearly 4,000 mg a day, there were be a drastic change (1.65 million fewer) in the amount of deaths worldwide if the average sodium intake was closer to 2,000 mg a day, and finally, the reduction of sodium intake would prevent about 10% of cardiovascular related deaths.

The reason that this study is so significant is because its findings also uncover reasons as to why cardiovascular disease rates were high among those with low sodium intake, which is less that 3,000 mg per day. The medium of salt intake where most Americans fall into is between 3,000 and 6,000 mg per day. Robert Shmerling, M.D. states that the reason for this “could be that people with high blood pressure, other cardiovascular risk factors, or cardiovascular disease are usually advised to lower their salt intake. Their higher than average rates of cardiovascular disease and related deaths could then be erroneously linked to their lower salt intake.” In the third report done comparing sodium and another substance, potassium intake, with high blood pressure. The correlation concluded from this was that the higher the sodium intake, the higher the blood pressure, and the lower the potassium intake, the higher the blood pressure.

On the contrary, although salt intake is most commonly perceived as a hard endpoint, meaning that it is well-defined in the study protocol, definitive with respect to the disease process, and require no subjectivity, it can be brought to a consumers attention that just because salt is seen to cause high blood pressure, it may not in-fact be life threatening. High blood pressure is something that us as consumers associate with heart attacks in our minds, but it’s not a guarantee. In some people it might even be normal and not life-threatening, meaning it isn’t a hard endpoint.

In conclusion, in more cases than not, salt has caused high blood pressure. A good way to avoid the health risks of salt intake, would be to prepare your own food homemade, so you know the ingredients being put in, and you can control the amount of salt that is consumed. The FDA is also doing its part in its aim to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years. The FDA and the FSIS are promoting their efforts to identify chances where in they can make a different, and reduce sodium in food to ultimately put more control into consumers’ hands.