Salt may be making us fat

If your family has been packing on the pounds, the culprit could be too much sodium. An interesting new study from London just came out in the journal Hypertension that showed a higher salt intake in kids was linked to a greater likelihood of becoming overweight and obese. The reason? Researchers speculate that all that salt makes the kids thirsty and they end up drinking loads of calories from soda and other drinks. While switching everyone in your family to water instead of all the liquid calories is one solution, reducing the amount of sodium you eat is beneficial for lowering blood pressure and heart disease risk as well.
Bottomline: when you're shopping keep an eye on the sodium too. While sodium is found in many of the obvious places like snack foods and fast food, lunch meats, cheeses and breads are often also full of salt. Look for lower sodium versions of these (Alpine Lace, Boar's Head, Ezekiel bread).
Luckily many food companies are on board with getting the salt down. I've noticed many new varieties of lower sodium soups on the grocery store shelves lately and Campbell's just announced they'd be lowering the sodium level in 12 of their condensed soups marketed to children. There's also good research showing that eating broth-based soups before meals helps to lower the number of calories you eat at that meal; so soup can be a great diet tool.