My kids bicker over any number of household items, and the salt shaker, I’m not proud to say, is one. They love to shake extra salt on pasta, potatoes, rice, and eggs; I’ve even caught one of them licking the top of the shaker before. But they aren’t alone, apparently, in their taste for the stuff. According to the CDC, 90 percent of children between ages 6 and 18 consume an unhealthy amount of salt. This is a big reason why 1 in 6 kids over age 8 have too-high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for stroke and heart disease.
This report was a bit of a wake-up call to me. I’ve always associated sodium concerns with older Americans, and frankly, health experts have been so busy decrying the amount of sugar in our kid’s diets, salt awareness has gotten little play as of late. If anything, salt seems to be experiencing a “moment”; I just spied something called Pink Himalayan Sea Salt among other exotic variations in the spice aisle of my not-fancy supermarket the other day. Upon having babies, neither our pediatrician nor the parenting books I read made much mention of sodium restrictions. I had a vague notion that I shouldn’t salt my baby’s food; until one day, when I told my neighbor down the hall, who was from Spain and also had a baby, that my son was picky about meat and fish. “Are you adding salt to his food?” she asked. When I answered no, she said, “Would you like to eat meat or fish that didn’t have any salt?” This made sense. I started adding a pinch of salt to his food during cooking, and sure enough, he did seem more interested.
But according to the CDC, salt used in home cooking isn’t even the problem when it comes to sodium in our kids’ diets. The perps include the usual suspects in the realm of kids’s junk food: frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, and chips, as well as deli meats and prepared Mexican foods. These processed convenience foods are loaded with salt, among other questionable ingredients. Problematically, to children’s taste buds, they are also like manna from heaven, which is why it’s unrealistic to take things like pizza and nuggets off our kids’s plates entirely. But you can make some healthier swaps, and your children’s hearts may be healthier for it. “Reading labels may take a little extra time, but it’s a must,” says Dana White, R.D., nutrition adviser for HHK and author of the forthcoming book, First Bites: Superfoods for Babies and Toddlers. “There’s an incredible amount of variation across brands, especially for things like snack foods.”
Here’s a cheat sheet for cutting back on salt in your house:
For more tips for reducing sodium in your family’s diet, check out the CDC’s helpful page on the subject, here.
Leave a Reply