Salty foods may restrict blood vessels from widening

A study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that consuming salty foods may impair the ability of blood vessels to widen.

The researchers studied the impact of high salt food in 16 healthy volunteers by giving eight of them a low salt serving of tomato soup and a version with 10 times more salt to the others. Each serving was about a cup.

After the snacks were consumed, the volunteers were asked to put their arms in a blood pressure cuff, which temporarily cut off blood flow as it inflated. While the cuff was deflating, the researchers used an ultrasound machine to measure how much the arteries widened as the blood rushed back through them. The same experiment was repeated with the two groups of volunteers switched so that people who got a high salt snack the first time consumed the low salt version the second time.

Consistently, the arteries of people who got the high salt snack widened about half as much as those who consumed the low salt version. The effect passed in about two hours.

Abstract

[This study resulted in numerous unfavorable headlines for french fries; A headline about fries must be more appealing than a headline about soup...]