Adding salt to your meals can shorten your life span: Study

Researchers found that regularly adding salt to meals can reduce a person’s life expectancy by 1.5 years for females and more than two years for males. A study of 500,000 middle-aged Britons found a correlation between adding salt to your meals and premature death. However, seasoning used during cooking is not included in this analysis. The results were based on analysis of UK Biobank study participants who were tracked for an average of nine years. Although the research team felt that the data was strong enough to warrant caution, salt consumption serving as a proxy for a generally less healthy lifestyle was not explicitly ruled out by the study, reported The Guardian.

The research was le by Prof. Lu Qi of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, US. "To my knowledge, our study is the first to assess the relationship between adding salt to foods and premature death."

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He added, "Even a modest reduction in sodium intake, by adding less or no salt to food at the table, is likely to result in substantial health benefits, especially when it is achieved in the general population."

Those who constantly season their food had a 28 per cent higher chance of passing away before their time compared to those who never or never applied salt.

Men and women who consistently added salt had reduced life expectancies at age 50. Age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation, body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, food and medical disorders like diabetes, cancer and heart disease were also taken into account as potential outcome modifiers.

(With inputs from agencies)

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