Monday, August 25, 2014

Our attention to diets (continued)

Here's another one. This is a Google Trends report of online interest in "sodium" and "gluten", 2004 to the present. High sodium intake in the U.S. population increases the prevalence of high blood pressure and heart disease, which are leading killers in the United States. Yet, this topic is ovewhelmed by the growing American obsession with gluten (an obsession that has become fully detached from any serious concern about celiac disease).

3 comments:

rjs said...

Dr Aaron Carroll has recent posts on both...

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/low-salt-diets-associated-with-death-screw-you-guys-im-going-home/

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-you-probably-dont-need-to-be-on-that-gluten-free-diet/

surprisingly, low salt diets are likely more dangerous than high salt diets..

usfoodpolicy said...

Thanks for the links!

You can guess that I find it easy to agree with the second link (gluten).

The other link (salt) was interesting, but it may not be drastically different from my post. It is true that there has been recent research questioning extremely low sodium diets, but almost no Americans consume such low levels. I'll bet that Dr. Aaron Carroll wouldn't disagree with my comments on sodium in populations.

Kevin C. Klatt, PhD, RD said...

The 'low salt diets are dangerous' literature is actually relatively weak and marred by methodological issues. I covered the topic a bit here if you're interested: http://nutrevolve.blogspot.com/2014/08/should-you-say-nah-to-sodium.html

It's a shame that the enthusiasm in nutrition has moved from evidence-based discussions to conspiracy theories.