Health

Hypertension: Why excess salt, salty spices are bad for your child

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3 years ago

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Childhood hypertension has not been given any serious attention when compared with many other childhood health-related issues, especially in many developing countries including Nigeria. This is because of the unfounded belief that it is a disease condition among adults only!

Despite the global changes in dietary intake among all human groups, children are more predisposed to consuming unwholesome diets with much sugar and salt. Children love fast foods because they satisfy their taste buds and they are easily available and attractive.

The food industries have capitalized on these attributes of children and they consolidate on ensuring a big economic market is made out of this. They invest in aggressive marketing strategies to entice innocent minds to consume these food items with much fat, sugar and salt content.

High intake of dietary salt has contributed to the present epidemic of high blood pressure that is becoming observable among Nigerian children.

Now, experts in public health say reduction of dietary salt intake in the daily diets of children from home cooking is a veritable programme with two prongs that will protect both children and adults from developing preventable high blood pressure.

There is also the need to reduce salt intake from other food sources, including school meals. Hidden salt, right from many of the common food seasonings to cooking salt being added liberally to food, worsens the plight of children as far as high blood pressure is concerned.

Medical researchers are coming up with findings on high blood pressure among children in Nigeria. Recently, the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Research Unit (EBRU) of the Institute for Advanced Medical Research and Training (IAMRAT) of the College of Medicine, the University of Ibadan, with the support of a grant from LINKS Resolve to Save Live organization in the United States of America (LINKS RTSL, USA) investigated the salt content of the school meals served pupils in primary school participating in the home-grown school feeding programme.

It was part of interventions that would ensure reduction in salt intake and subsequently prevent hypertension in children. This was carried out with the cooperation of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, and the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme offices (NHGSFP) in Oyo and Ogun states in southwest Nigeria.

The study reported that the sodium content of the school meals served to pupils in Primaries 1 to 3 was within the acceptable limit, and thus may not pose health risks such as hypertension. However, a nested survey of high blood pressure among these pupils benefiting from the national home-grown school feeding programme (NHGSFP) revealed the prevalence of hypertension to be 6 per cent and 7.1 per cent respectively in urban and rural schools in both study sites (Oyo and Ogun states).

These findings underscore the need for continuing efforts at ensuring salt content in food is within recommended limits while food constituting other sources of salt intake such as food consumed outside the school like at home and in other eateries are investigated for salt content and subsequently controlled for salt content.

Dr Oyediran Oyewole, a public health nutrition and health promotion and education expert, during the dissemination of findings of the LINKS-supported study said there was a need to provide a standard measure for cooks to gauge salt use in the preparation of school meals as well as standard measures of the quantity of meal to be dished out to the pupils.

The stakeholders included the parents, the teachers, representatives of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-governmental Affairs, the State Universal Primary Education Board (SUPEB), NHGSFP managers and school food vendors in the two states.

This will help to prevent cooks and other people from adding salt arbitrarily to meals while cooking. This will also discourage cooks from relying on their taste buds to determine when the added salt is enough because peoples’ taste buds are conditioned differently.

Cooking salt is a good source of dietary sodium; an essential mineral for the body. Salt is present in a wide range of foods and drinks. It may occur naturally in certain foods, or manufacturers may add salt during the food production process.

Dr Oyewole said that a child between the ages of 5 and 12 years requires approximately 1,500 mg of sodium per day, meaning that a child will require less than half of a teaspoon equivalent of table salt per day.

“The moment you are tasting the food during preparation and it is like the salt is enough, you might have exceeded the amount of salt that is required to be added. Most people add salt to food without any consideration for the food’s natural sodium content,” he added.

According to him, while factors such as age, gender, indulgence in unhealthy lifestyles like smoking and alcohol, obesity, stress and unhealthy diets can predispose an adult to hypertension. High intake of salt from meals is the most common possible factor causing high blood pressure in young children.

He said that changes in dietary intake and wrong information on the use of food seasoning have also contributed to poor health among children in recent years, urging that prepackaged fast food items like noodles should be taken with homemade sauces rather than the highly salted seasoning included in the package.

The project’s Principal Investigator, Professor IkeOluwapo Ajayi, said that excessive salt intake can make it harder for the kidneys to remove fluid, which then makes the body retain water. And the extra water in the blood causes extra pressure on the blood vessel walls, raising the blood pressure.

Professor Ajayi said curtailing a high intake of salt in children is important because high blood pressure during childhood goes on to high blood pressure in adulthood.

She added: “Even if the children do not have hypertension now and they continue to take high dietary salt, they are laying the foundation for hypertension, which we want to prevent. The earlier we nip it in the bud and prevent it, the better.

“That is why LINKS-RTSL supported this research to look at the salt intake in children but more especially children that are benefitting from school meals under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme. If this programme gets it right, it will be a good way to educate parents, teachers, vendors and caregivers on salt use, thereby ensuring a reduction in salt intake in meals both in school and at home.”

Professor Ajayi added that although the study found salt content in the sampled school meals to be within the recommended range, it will still be necessary to consider the salt content of other meals and snacks children take within the day to ensure that they do not exceed their daily allowance for salt.

While keeping a check on salt intake is established as beneficial to good health, Mr Musiludeen Olanipekun, the Principal Education Officer, Oyo State Universal Basic Education Board (Oyo SUBEB), stated that the board will be using the study’s findings to influence its policies and urged heads of schools to ensure that salt levels of food served to pupils are monitored.

The fact that children may develop high blood pressure is majorly attributed to high dietary salt intake. Knowing that salt intake among Nigerians in general is high, adopting salt reduction targets is germane to a healthy generation and a brighter future for families, the community and the country at large.

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