SALT AND OBESITY
Australian researchers at the University of Sydney have uncovered a most startling correlation between the amount of food we absorb after meals and their salt content, the British Medical Journal (292:1697) reports.
Until now, it was believed that the only way in which salt could increase our weight was by causing more water to be held in the tissues. The Australian discovery, however, suggests that salt’s role in increasing body weight could be much more enduring.
After a starchy meal (i.e., lentils or bread), one can show that the blood sugar level rises to a certain height for a certain time, and that both of these things depend upon the size of the meal. Thus, the larger the meal, the higher the blood sugar level rises and the longer it takes for it to fall back down to normal again.
Such blood sugar “curves” following a standard-sized starchy meal are ordinarily very reproducible. The Australians, however, have shown that even without increasing the amount of starch in the meal, one can nevertheless increase both the height and duration of the blood sugar curve resulting from it, if one takes salt with the food.
Salt, therefore, either boosts digestion of food in the intestine so that more sugar is released from it, or it stimulates the intestine to absorb sugar more efficiently. Either way, salt makes more calories become available to the body from the same amount of food.
These findings strongly suggest that if we wish to be slim, we need to carefully limit the amount of salt that we take in our food. While this could be important for any of us, it is more so for diabetics, especially if they have been experiencing inexplicably high levels of blood sugar despite a carefully controlled diet. This research, of course, needs to be confirmed, but that should not be a difficult task.
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