Salt intake that is often deemed high may actually have benefits, scientists say… “We humans eat more salt than is necessary. But we all do it. So the question is: why?” asks Paul Breslin, a professor of nutritional sciences who researches sodium appetite at New Jersey’s Rutgers University… Scientists suggest that sodium intake may have physiological benefits that make salt particularly tempting — and ditching the salt shaker difficult. It comes down to evolution… “Over the last five decades, salt content of commercial food in our food [in the United States] has gone up. But if you look at people’s 24-hour urinary sodium excretion, you see that the amounts of salt people consume have been constant,” he says. Irrespective of age, sex or race, between 1957 and 2003 Americans have been eating on average 3.5 grams of salt a day. “This suggests that we are somehow regulating the amount of salt we are eating,” Breslin says.
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