Low-salt diet seen acceptable to many
Adults may be amenable to lowering their salt intake, particularly in the context of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, which is naturally low in salt, research shows.
“There is a public perception that reduced sodium diets are unpalatable,” Dr. Eva Obarzanek noted in an interview with Reuters Health. “But what we found is that there is really no difference in acceptability ratings from a higher and a lower sodium diet.”
"A taste for salt is a learned preference and you can unlearn it—but it takes time,” added Obarzanek, a research nutritionist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. She suggests trying non-sodium spices and herbs to flavor food.
In the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH)-Sodium trial, 412 adults aged 22 and older with or at risk for high blood pressure (hypertension) were randomly assigned to eat either a control diet typical of a normal US diet or the DASH diet, which is abundant in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products.
Within each dietary group, subjects ate foods with a high, intermediate, or low level of salt for 30 days each. Results of the trial, published previously, showed that reducing salt intake from higher to lower levels significantly lowered blood pressure in the subjects.
Obarzanek’s team now reports that responses to “acceptability” questionnaires completed by 354 DASH-Sodium participants indicate that both the intermediate and low sodium diets were as acceptable as the high sodium diet.
“Although they preferred the intermediate level sodium diet, the lower level sodium diet fared no worse than the higher sodium diet,” Obarzanek told Reuters Health. “Interestingly, it seems that when you are on the DASH diet, low sodium is quite acceptable.”
As a start, she says “a goal” could be the intermediate sodium level (2,300 milligrams per day for a 2,100 kcal diet), with the further goal of getting to the lower sodium level of 1,200 milligrams per day. “The intermediate level is really the upper limit of current recommendations,” she noted.
“The DASH diet,” Obarzanek added, “is a great diet to try to follow. It meets all the recommendations established by the Institute of Medicine, it’s easy to follow, focuses on fruits and vegetables and low-fat dairy, it’s heart-healthy, it provides a way for consumers to meet lower levels of salt intake and, as our research now shows, it appears to be acceptable.”
SOURCE: Journal of the American Dietetic Association, September 2007.
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