A valuable commodity throughout history, salt once was used to pay Roman soldiers. In modern times, salt, also known as sodium, has played a big role in the manufacture of processed and other foods. Far too big of a role it appears -- most Americans eat way too much salt and pay the price with high blood pressure, obesity, and heart, kidney and liver disease. Salty food can make you hungry, and often hungry for more salty food. Several reasons and theories explain why salty foods make you hungry. In fact, many researchers believe salty foods may be addictive in the same fashion as cocaine, heroin and cigarettes.
Dehydration
According to the website NutriHealth, salt is rated as one of the top 10 foods that increase your hunger and cravings. In theory, salty foods increase your cravings by dehydrating your system. And when you become dehydrated, it can make you hungry as well as thirsty. Registered dietitian Tammy Lakatos Shames concurs: "Salt makes us both hungrier and thirstier." Because most Americans eat two to three times more salt than needed, our craving for salt makes us hungrier and eventually fatter.
Addiction Theory
In 2009, at the University of Florida College of Medicine, a study posited that salty foods act in a similar way to opiates, creating a craving for salty foods and withdrawal symptoms when the foods are withdrawn. As a result, you tend to eat more salty foods, leading to more weight gain. It appears that the Ruffles Lays potato chip ads that proclaimed, "No one can eat just one," was more that just a marketing slogan.
Addiction Evidence
A 2011 study by researchers at Duke University and in Australia, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reported in Stone Hearth Newsletters, seems to confirm that an appetite for salt in rats is activated by the same group of genes that regulates cocaine, cigarette and heroin addiction. Assuming the same is true in people, we get "high" from salty foods and suffer withdrawals when we cut down on sodium. That could explain why many people have difficulty restricting their salt intake, even when suffering from health problems and instructed to cut down by their doctors.
Considerations
The recommended dose of salt for most people is 2,300 mg per day. For people with certain health conditions, 1,500 mg or less is considered a maximum amount. Yet it is common to find an individual serving of processed foods with 400 mg or more of sodium, which indicates how easy it is to exceed the recommended doses. Katherine Zeratsky, nutritionist at the Mayo Clinic, notes that processed foods account for up to 75 percent of the diet of a typical person in the U.S. Many people are consuming three or four times the daily recommended amount. Dietitian Shames says that it might take 21 days to get used to a reduced salt intake, especially if the research indicating that salt is addictive is correct.
References
- NutriHealth; Top Ten Foods That Increase Your Hunger and Cravings; Sanjana; May 2009
- Stone Hearth Newsletters; Is Salt Addictive? Is That Why Every Food That is Not Natural is Loaded With It?; July 2011
- Diabetic Live; Salt: An Unsuspected Diabetic Culprit?; June 2010
- MayoClinic.com; Why Do Processed Foods Contain So Much Sodium?; Katherine Zeratsky
- PubMed; The Salted Food Addiction Hypothesis May Explain Overeating and the Obesity Epidemic; J.A. Cocores, et al.; July 2009
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