By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Teenagers are not yet adults, but a study indicates most teens almost match adults in how much salt they have in their food.
At the Medical College of Georgia, researcher Haidong Zhu looked at sodium – the troublesome part of the salt compound – in food survey data from 766 healthy teens.
“The average sodium that teenagers consumed is about 3,300 milligrams per day, which is almost as high as adults.’’
And adults commonly get almost twice the recommended daily allowance.
Zhu also says teens who had more sodium were more likely to have more fat, regardless of whether they took in too many calories.
The study in the journal Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at healthfinder.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.