DOH-XI urges public to avoid salty foods

DAVAO City – The Department of Health (DOH) in the region called on the public Monday to take care of their kidneys by avoiding salty foods.

Dr. Maria Theresa Lorenzo Bad-ang, spokesperson in the region of the DOH’s Renal Disease Control Program pointed out that eating “junk foods” like corn and potato chips, which have high salt content, can cause renal disease if done often.  Bad-ang said that the recommended daily allowance for salt amounts only to two grams per day. She expressed her alarm about how people—especially school children—eat these foods on a regular basis.

“Each bag [of chips] contain about 3,000 to 5,000 mg of salt,” she said, adding that if a person has to offset that amount of salt intake by drinking water, that person has to drink 5 to 10 times the recommended amount of eight glasses per day.  The official added that excessive salt intake affects how we think food tastes, thereby impairing our judgement that helps us identify whether the food we eat is too salty or not.

She recommended taking a break from salty food for six weeks to “reset” our body’s neurotransmitters or brain chemicals that communicate information throughout a person’s brain and body.

Doing so will enable the body to identify what it previously thought were bland tasting food as already salted, she explained.  City Councilor Mary Joselle Villafuerte, chairn of the committee on health, said that cases of congenital kidney diseases account for 10 percent of the whole lot; the rest of the causes of kidney problems root from diabetes.

Villafuerte also said that excessive salt intake causes hypertension which, if prolonged, may lead to kidney diseases.  She said that the city council is looking into crafting an ordinance or a resolution to cover this health issue.  Her advice for the public to keep kidney diseases at bay is to drink plenty of water especially after taking in salty food, a household staple in homes and school these days.

Villafuerte, however, admitted the city cannot control the selling of “junk food”, and can only encourage people to make conscious decisions to eat healthier food and increase their awareness of kidney diseases and the causes of these. (MindaNews)