Hi, I was wondering the degree to which high intake of processed foods predict negative health outcomes even when other health promoting behaviors are present. Specifically, the negatives of a high sodium intake being an independent risk factor for CVD/potentially other negative health outcomes.
If someone is at/maintaining a healthy BMI/WC, is at or above the PA guidelines, includes adequate servings of fruits/vegetables per day, consumes <10% of total energy from sat fat, and is normotensive (I’ve heard even normotensive individuals can benefit from salt reduction in terms of CVD risk from BP reduction but I could very well be mistaken), to what degree is a high sodium intake from processed/salted foods a health risk/is it sufficiently mitigated? Lets say all of those factors are in place, but with the American average sodium intake of 3400mg/day, from intake of processed foods+regularly salting whole foods.
Processed foods are often hyper palatable/energy dense, but not always. There’s plenty of sauces, seasonings, broths, and meat alternatives I wouldn’t call very “hyper palatable”, but they certainly have a quite high sodium content.
Thanks!