Can Salt Increase Calorie Intake?

The debate rages on over whether dietary salt (NaCl) increases the risk of cardiovascular events, with no clear answer in sight.  Yet few people are paying attention to another, more insidious effect of salt: it may increase our calorie intake, and eventually, the size of our waistlines.

Introduction

Humans are born with specific hard-wired food motivations, which guide us to food properties that kept our ancestors alive and fertile in times past.  We have an instinctive attraction to sweetness because, in the world of our ancestors, it indicated ripe fruit or honey-- both important sources of calories and other nutrients.  Most of the other food properties we're instinctively drawn to, such as starch, fat, and glutamate, signify high-calorie foods.

Yet one of our hard-wired food motivations stands out from the rest: our attraction to salt.  Since salt is calorie-free, salt appetite is one of the few instinctive food drives that doesn't relate directly to acquiring calories.  Interestingly, salt is the only essential micronutrient (vitamin/mineral) we can taste at the concentrations normally found in food.  Not only our brains, but also our tongues, are hard-wired to seek salt above all other micronutrients.

A Free Issue of Examine.com Research Digest

Examine.com is a website that provides unbiased information on supplements and nutrition.  They publish the Examine.com Research Digest (ERD), which reviews the latest studies in these areas.  I like ERD because it does a nice job of curating recent science, making it understandable and engaging for a broad audience, and explaining important background information.  They have no conflicts of interest because they don't sell anything except information.  I've been a scientific reviewer for ERD since the beginning.

Examine.com is celebrating its fifth anniversary today.  To celebrate, they offered to put together a custom issue of ERD using five of my favorite articles.  I chose articles I thought my audience would enjoy.  You can download your free copy here (PDF).

If you like it and decide you want to sign up for ERD, there is a link in the PDF, or you can visit this page.  They're having a sale today, so if you're thinking about joining, today is a good choice.  If you purchase through the links I provided, you'll be supporting Whole Health Source at no extra cost to yourself.

If you already have ERD, let me know how you like it in the comments.