AGITATED STOMACHS CAUSE SALT CRAVING

Graham MacGregor, professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at St. George's Hospital in London, gives a highly technical lecture on the dangers of salty foods:

The short-term effects of eating a lot of salt are it makes you thirsty and that makes you consume more soft drinks, and soft drinks have got a lot of sugar and a huge amount of calories.

And the sort of snacks that are being given, lunchtime snacks, are being given to children in Australia and in the UK, are very calorie-dense, all these cheese snacks and meat snacks and so on.

They've got huge amounts of calories in, and the thing that makes them edible is this very high salt concentration.

The salt taste receptors in the children get suppressed and then they want more and more salty foods so stomachs simply get a bit too agitated with these very high salt foods and demand them more.

Salt agitated stomach? The real worry is that my scare tactic agitated brain will blow a gasket.