"Children who eat less salt and drink fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks may significantly lower their risks of obesity," researchers recently reported in the journal Hypertension. "Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are a significant source of calorie intake in children," said Feng J. He, a researcher at St George's University of London, England. "It has been shown that sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption is related to obesity in young people." They wanted to know whether there is a link between salt intake and sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption. Dr He and colleagues analyzed data from a 1997 national survey of more than 2,000 people between 4 and 18 in Britain. "We found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid," said He. "From our research, we estimated that 1 gram of salt cut from their daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day." The researchers also found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks. From their research, they predicted that reducing salt intake by 1 gram each day would reduce sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption by 27 grams per day, after. "If children aged 4 to 18 cut their salt intake by half, there would be a decrease of about two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child, so each child would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kilocalories per week," Dr He said. In previous studies, researchers found that a low-salt diet lowers blood pressure in children, and prevents the development of high blood pressure later in life. "Both high blood pressure and obesity increase the risk of having strokes and heart attacks," Dr He said. Dr He recommends that parents check labels and choose low-salt food products. "Small reductions in the salt content of 10 to 20 percent cannot be detected by the human salt taste receptors   and do not cause any technological or safety problems," Dr He said. Compared with previous studies, the recent one found that   _  .
a lower-salt diet may mean less sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption a low-salt diet keeps children out of high blood pressure children face the risk of having strokes and heart attacks low-salt food products do not do harm to people's health