80% of salt intake comes from food processed by industry and crafts.
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Our taste buds are able to adapt to a low-salt diet: this is the result of an American study which has just been presented at the congress of the European Society of Cardiology. It’s a fact: more than 80% of French people swallow too much salt. But it is well known, excess salt promotes hypertension which is itself an accelerator of wear of the arteries. Researchers from a University of Kentucky started from an observation: one of the main obstacles to reducing salt consumption is the taste, the feeling of swallowing dishes that are too bland. But it is possible to learn to like less salty foods, they say, because the perception of salty taste can change in a few months.
To reach this conclusion, these researchers asked 30 volunteers with hypertension to voluntarily stop using salt for four months. There were two groups and one did better than the other. In the control group, which was just instructed to lower its salt intake, but nothing more, the results were not good (since this group instead unknowingly increased its intake), but in the other group, the participants were entitled to regular dietary advice and above all, they were given an electronic device to detect the salt content in everything they put on their plate. Result: they have voluntarily reduced their salt consumption by 30%.
Most of them spontaneously removed the salt shakers from the table and especially their pleasure in eating less salty increased in the space of four months because their brain and their taste buds registered the taste of a properly salted food to stay healthy. This naturally made it possible to move the cursor of what is good in taste.
The right method is therefore to have consumption benchmarks. The limit, underline these researchers, is that the attraction to salt never completely disappears. And good habits can be lost as soon as the marks on the amount of salt swallowed become blurred.
The problem remains that of hidden salt in ready meals because the industrial sector uses it as a flavor enhancer. 80% of salt intake comes from food processed by industry and crafts. And in the absence of a clear benchmark, the daily limit is reached very quickly. We reach the five grams with half a baguette of bread, four slices of sausage and a quarter of a pizza. Hence the interest of home cooking, and of taking a look at the ingredients and at the Nutri-Score when it exists. According to a survey by Public Health France, more than 90% of French people say they have changed at least one buying habit thanks to this Nutri-Score.