A taste for salt can keep you feeling chipper

A taste for salt can keep you feeling chipper

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:29 AM on 12th March 2009


Food for thought: researchers say salt acts as a natural anti-depressant

Next time you reach for the salt shaker to flavour your chips, perhaps you need not feel so guilty about treating yourself.

For researchers say salt acts as a natural anti-depressant, which may explain why we crave it despite the health risks associated with eating too much of it.

While too much can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease, not enough could trigger 'psychological depressions', the study said.

It will be welcome news to those of us who enjoy tucking into fish and chips with a sprinkling of salt and vinegar.

The study, by researchers at the University of Iowa in the U.S., discovered that rats began to behave erratically and shun foods and activities they normally enjoyed when they were deprived of salt.

Psychologist Kim Johnson, who led the team, told the journal Physiology and Behaviour: 'Things that normally would be pleasurable for rats didn't elicit the same degree of relish. This leads us to believe that a salt deficit and the craving associated with it can induce one of the key symptoms associated with depression.'

It is believed the human body has, over centuries, developed a feel-good factor associated with salt, partly because it used to be so scarce.

Roman legionnaires were paid in salt because of its value at the time - with the Latin name 'salarium' leading to the word 'salary', used today to describe wages.

It was also used to preserve food by the Romans and until the invention of mechanical refrigeration in the 19th century. By then people had become so used to the taste that it came to be sold as a condiment on dinner tables.

The recommended daily intake for an adult is four grams, although experts say the body needs only half as much.

However, most adults in the developed world consume around ten grams a day, mainly because their diets contain too many processed foods with high salt contents.

The minerals in salt are required by the body - in small quantities - to help move fluid in and out of cells. But too much can cause various ailments, most notably high blood pressure.

The Iowa researchers fear many people now react to salt in the same way that addicts react to hard drugs.

Miss Johnson added: 'This suggests that salt need and cravings may be linked to the same brain pathways as those related to drug addiction and abuse.'

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161315/A-taste-salt-feeling-chipper.html