People’s life is explained as a physical and chemical process. It is invisible by the naked eye, but the persons’ organisms, every subject, food, some liquid substances consist of different chemical elements. These elements help people to lead a normal life. The absence or even lacking of at least one element in people’s organisms leads to some health problems.
Sodium chloride (NaCl), or salt, is one of the very important elements in our bodies. Salt serves as a conductor in our bodies, through which our nerve impulses go around our body, including our brain signals. It also helps to contract our muscles, and the heart is not an exception. Salt brings varieties to our taste and smell, helps our digestion process, regulate the acid-base balance and absorb potassium. We also fell thirsty because our organism contains salt. (Salt Association)
The presence of salt at our bodies confirms the fact that our tears are salty. (Bloch). The abundance or lack of salt may cause some health problems, our organism cannot work properly in this situation. Old people, pregnant and those who do some physical exercises are always in a group of risk as their organism requires heightened standards as the organism cannot function in a proper way. People, who go in for sports lose not only water, but also sodium and carbohydrate, which people should fulfill. Pregnant women are not allowed to follow low salt diet as it can cause blood volume in the unborn child. (Salt Association)
Salt in people’s organisms influence the blood pressure, children and old people are especially in the group of risk. The blood pressure may rise if person takes too much salt in his or her food allowance, and people of any age can suffer from this. The everyday problems with high presser may lead to heart problems, even to heart attack. Of course, eating too much salt is not the only item which leads to heart attack, that is also big weight, alcohol, leading sedentary life (Salt 2008).
Many products contain salt. The examples are celery, milk, shellfish, water and others. The percentage of sodium chloride in water depends on the geographical location, the levels of sewage and lots of other factors. The investigations show that only 12 percent of the whole norm of salt we take to food by ourselves (6 percent is added when we eat, 5 percent we add when we cook food and only 1 percent taken from water), the other about 78 percent is already in the food we eat. (DRI 2005)
The food people produce also contains a great amount of salt, especially all canned food, including canned and instant soups, salted snacks, cheeses, ready made food and frozen dinners and all types of sauces: ketchup, relish and mustard (Trankina 2001). All named food and products contain salt, one product more the other less, and people should follow the amount of salt they eat, as it is rather dangerous, as it was written higher, to eat too much salt. The every day norm of salt is 6g, which is something about a teaspoon. It is not so much, taking into consideration that most of salt we eat is already in the products. (Salt 2008)
The food may always contain a huge amount of salt, and it may be food which contains more or less amount of salt depending on brands and recipes. We deal with baked beans, sandwiches, breakfast cereals, pasta sauces, crisps, pizza, ready meals, soup, sausages, crumpets, tomato ketchup, bagels, mayonnaise and other sauces when we talk about the amount of salt, which depends on brands and recipes. The products which always contain a high level of salt are anchovies, salami, bacon, soy sauce, gravy granules, ham, olives, pickles, chips, if one of it ingredients is salt, salted and dry roasted nuts, cheese, salt fish, smoked meat and fish, stock cubes, prawns, and others. (Salt 2008) It is impossible, of course, to refuse from all that food, and there is no need to do it, our task is just to control what we eat and hoe much salt is there.
The specialists try to explain people how it is important to know how much salt is there in the product you buy. The first thing, what people should do, is to look on the label of the product. If the amount of salt is more than 1.5g per 100g (or 0.6g sodium), so the concentration of salt is high here. If it is 0.3g salt or less per 100g (or 0.1g sodium), so it is low.
So, eating too much salt may lead to dangerous problems in people’s health. People can avoid many health problems, such as high blood pressure and as a result the heart diseases, stroke, some types of cancer only by reducing the amount salt people eat. Most of salt we eat is already one of the food components, and people also add salt during cooking and eating. We do not say that salt is dangerous and people should take it out of their tables. People only should reduce salt, as at the same time salt is rather important chemical element, without each our organism cannot function properly.
Works Cited
Bloch, David. “Salt. Mrbloch Achieve.” Archaeology on the Net.
DRI, dietary reference intakes for water, potassium, sodium, chloride, and sulfate. By Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Panel on Dietary Reference Intakes for Electrolytes and Water. National Academies Press, 2005.
“Salt Association.” Britannica. Internet Guide Selection.
“Salt.” 2008. Food Standards Agency.
Trankina, Michele L. “Living without Salt?” World and I.