Salty snacks and weight gain in children
Story By: Kristin Hawley
Source: KOAA
Kids and snacks go hand in hand. But those same snacks might be putting the pounds on , and for a reason you might not think of.
It's just another piece of the childhood obesity puzzle, but one that can go along way toward helping cut down on the pounds.
Think about it for a second, when you eat salty food you get thirsty. And when you get thirsty snacking on salty foods, you tend to reach for the nearest soda. Children do the same thing and that combination adds inches to their waistline.
As a matter of fact, a new British study is showing that just cutting salt a little can go a long way toward getting children to cut back on sodas. But cutting the salt out of a diet isn't as easy as it sounds. According to the authors of this study, most of us think most of the salt in our food comes from the salt shaker. But only about ten to fifteen percent of the salt we, and our children, consume everyday comes from there. The rest comes from salt added to food before you even get to it.
That mainly happens with fast food and processed foods. And those are foods we all tend to consume, sometimes more often than we think we do. Of course, salt leads to getting thirsty and that makes it more likely we, and our kids, will reach for soda. And soda, as well as other sugary drinks, have been linked to the weight problem children have these days.
So these authors are suggesting cutting daily salt intake, especially for our children, in half. And making that cut might also cut back on calories from sweetened drinks and cut down on that expanding waistline not only for our children but for us as well.
