“Just Say No” to Salty Snacks and Save Your Heart

Daniel Touizer, CEO of Cinergy Health, along with Dr. Margaret Lewin, medical director both believe that many health care dollars, as much as one trillion, could be saved each year by simply changing some of the ways Americans eat, drink and take care of their environment.

Among our bad eating habits is our obsession with salty foods. Calling these high salt content snacks “food” is really a stretch, yet we as a nation gobble them up like mad. And when times are tough, as they are now during the present economic turn down, we eat even more of them. It is estimated that potato chips and their food-stuff relatives found in the same supermarket aisle have been consumed as much as 20% more in recent economic crisis.

So what’s wrong with chips, pretzels, and other such crunchy treats? For one thing, a surfeit of sodium leads to hypertension, high blood pressure and other diseases affecting the cardiovascular system.

“Heart disease and strokes are the first and third leading causes of death in the United States,”

said Margaret Lewin of Cinergy Health.

“We estimate that the total cost to health care to treat both these diseases is as high as $475 billion a year,”

she said.

Daniel Touizer, CEO of Cinergy concurs with the Institute of Medicine that adults consume a maximum of 2,300 mg or just one teaspoon of salt each day. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) the average American eats 50% more salt than the recommended amount, about 3,436 mg daily.

The Rand Corporation research group said in a September report on this issue that if our nation reduced sodium intake to the recommended levels, we would save about $18 billion each year in health care costs.