Is the Low-Salt Diet worth its salt?

Listen to this stunning finding:

Surprising new research suggests that a diet low in salt may be worse for your heart than eating lots of salt.

In a study of 8,700 Americans, the 25 percent of the population who ate the least salt were 80 percent more likely to die of cardiac disease than the 25 percent who ate the most salt (even after the researchers adjusted their statistics to account for the effect of cardiac risk factors like smoking and diabetes).

The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, doesn’t confirm that a low-salt diet itself is bad for the heart. But it does say that people who eat the least salt suffer from the highest rates of death from cardiac disease.

Yes, this result doesn’t prove that less salt on your corn on the cob will lead to heart attack, but according to Cohen, “the main argument for reducing salt in prevention of heart disease has been that there’s a relationship between higher sodium and higher blood pressure,” he said. “There have been many studies of this relationship, but when one actually looks at the numbers, the average blood pressure difference associated with quite a bit of sodium intake is very modest.”

The bottom line returns to moderation. If you have normal blood pressure, you should not be worried about salt in moderation. I’m certain a flurry of studies are going to follow this one, to find out just how much this study is worth it’s salt.