I love watching cooking shows and I make it a point to watch the shows of celebrity chefs when I have the time. I was reading about some celebrity chefs earlier when I ran across a blog post on how Jamie Oliver, one of the most popular celebrity chefs today, has launched a line of pasta sauces that contain too much salt. Apparently, parents and other concerned citizens in the UK are all in an uproar about this. But is salt really bad?

I did some reading on salt and its effects on our health and this is what I found. An entry in the Guardian blog states:

We’re used to the flavour, but our bodies only need about a single gram of salt a day. The UK’s average consumption is nearly ten times that, prompting a government health campaign – though its rather arbitrary 6g limit would bring relatively few benefits to the nation’s blood pressure.

I am assuming that high salt intake increases our blood pressure. I have heard this from lots of people before. Oh, don’t put too much salt in your food. You don’t want to increase your risk of high blood pressure. Then again, I have always liked to use salt liberally and I have not had a single episode of high blood pressure. I would like to think that it is a matter of more than our salt intake. Perhaps we should take a look at the overall picture – having a balanced diet and taking salt in moderation.

Photo courtesy of parl

Originally posted on May 25, 2011 @ 11:53 pm