Study Reveals Why Our Salt Cravings Are So Uncontrollable

Whether or not your salt intake should be limited or encouraged is up for debate; but if you've ever tried to limit the amount of sodium you're eating in a day, you know how hard it can be. A new study conducted at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston discovered a neural pathway that detects and responds to irregular levels of sodium in the body. Your brain is sending you signals when it thinks it needs more — and these signals are hard to ignore.

The body needs salt; and when it doesn't get enough, it activates hormones to alert the brain that something's up. Scientists have understood for some time that sodium deficiency increases the prevalence of the two hormones, angiotensin II and aldosterone, in your body. It was unclear what these hormones did to remediate the deficiency, though — until now. The researchers focused on certain neurons called NTSHSD2, which respond specifically to aldosterone, to try to determine exactly how our cravings for salt take shape in the brain.

What they found is that, while the NTSHSD2 neurons were indeed activated, they only produced a craving when both hormones were present, leading researchers to suspect that a different set of angiotestin II-sensitive neurons must operate in conjunction with the NTSHSD2 neurons to produce a desire for salt.

This redundant system means a misfire of a salt craving is unlikely, which is good news for our sodium regulation, of course — our bodies naturally react to what we need. The trouble comes in when our hormone levels are thrown off, no longer reacting to a natural deficiency but instead to an accustomed overconsumption. The average American adult eats 8.1 grams of sodium per day, well over the 5 grams recommended by the World Health Organization. Could the overload be messing with our hormone response? If so, this could be part of the reason we crave salt so intensely, and so often, despite our frequent intake.

We eat much more sodium than we think on an average American diet — here are 26 foods with a surprising amount of salt.