US Kids and Teens Eating Too Much Salt, CDC Finds

US school children and especially teens are eating too much salt, and they’re doing so with the staples of the American diet — things like pizza, bread, snacks, chicken nuggets, and cheeseburgers.

Children ages 6-18 consumed 42 percent more sodium on average than needed, with teens consuming nearly 60 percent more than recommended levels, according to a 2009-2010 survey released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In raw numbers, schoolchildren consumed 3,279 mg of sodium daily on average, with teens taking in 3,672 mg a day. The daily recommended amount is 2,300 mg.

Higher sodium intake has consequences beyond poor health for US children and teenagers. A study published last month in The American Journal of Managed Care found that a child with hypertension cost the healthcare system an extra $1,000 a year on average.

While most of the sodium intake by kids took place off campus, school lunches were not off the hook — the survey found that among kids who ate a meal at school during a day of the survey, 26 percent of the sodium intake came from food consumed at school. That’s important, given the timeline of the survey, which occurred just prior to sweeping changes to the school lunch program following a 2010 law designed to make the meals healthier.

Leaders of the National School Boards Association and some members of Congress have pushed to roll back some of those changes, saying they have created wasted food and that school cafeterias are losing money. First Lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, is pressing to keep the 2010 law intact.

Release of the CDC sodium survey comes at a critical time: next week is the September meeting of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which is wrapping up its work before it makes recommendations to the U.S. secretaries of Health and Human Services and Agriculture for the document that will become national nutrition policy for 2015-2020. Recommendations from the panel and subsequent changes to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans informed the law that is now under fire.

The CDC report on school-age children also follows an uproar this spring over an Institute of Medicine report that said the evidence was inconsistent to support cutting sodium back beyond 2,300 mg to 1,500 mg, as recommended by the American Heart Association.

Among the findings in the CDC study:

• Approximately 43 percent of sodium came from 10 types of food: pizza; yeast bread and rolls; cold cuts/cured meats; savory snacks, which include chip and pretzels; sandwiches like cheeseburgers; cheese; chicken patties, nuggets, and tenders; pasta mixed dishes (including spaghetti with meat sauce but excluding macaroni and cheese); Mexican-mixed dishes such as burritos and tacos; and soups.

• Although foods from grocery stores contribute the majority of sodium intake, foods from fast-food/pizza restaurants continue to contribute higher amounts of sodium per calorie. Fast food and restaurant foods also contribute to higher proportions of total sodium among teens compared with younger children.

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