Scant Evidence Behind the Advice About Salt.

Joseph Daher

Mr. Charles Ippolito

December 19, 2018

AP Biology D-Even

Carroll, Aaron E. “Scant Evidence Behind the Advice About Salt.” The New York Times, The

New York Times, 17 Dec. 2018,

www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/upshot/salt-diet-heart-failure-little-evidence.html.

In an article published by the New York Times, Aaron E. Carroll highlights how despite a number of studies published by health scientists have questioned the usefulness of very low-salt diets, many health organizations continue to recommend them. Carroll cites the limited scope and mixed results of the few studies that sought to see if reduced sodium intake was associated with a lower risk of heart disease. He argues that health and dietary organizations are overconfident in their advice that simply reducing sodium intake has significantly lower risks of heart disease when exercising and eating more healthfully. Carroll calls for more controlled trials to prove the worth of dietary advice that amounts to largely hearsay, and to step back from the contrived notion of sodium restriction, concluding his article by stating that “it seems the assurance with which we speak should match the quality of evidence behind our recommendations”.

Despite the limited evidence supporting the benefit of a low-sodium diet, many different health organizations spread this unsubstantiated claim stating that it lowers the risk of heart disease. Heart disease is an endemic health problem in our modern society of industrialized and processed foods; about 5.7 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure every year. Thus the need for lowering the risk of heart disease is widespread and useful; but comparatively very little data has been collected on low-sodium diet. As Caroll points out, instead of selling fad diets like low-sodium diets, health organizations could and should push for more healthy holistic lifestyle changes in general.

Carroll’s article was a pointed summary of the debacle of unsubstantiated low-sodium fad diets, and how weak studies have contributed to the largely mythological notion of the association of heart disease and sodium intake. Carroll could have been more precise in what healthful lifestyle changes amount to besides reducing sodium intake, or the specifics of what would constitute more credible scientific studies to support the association of reduced sodium intake and reduced risk of heart disease. Otherwise, Carroll successfully used the scant evidence behind the advice about salt as a platform to advocate for more holistic lifestyle changes and point out how dietary advice is often based upon unfounded or weakly verified claims.