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What you don\u2019t know can kill you.<\/p>\nWhat you don\u2019t know can kill you.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a joke. And there\u2019s a particular kind of food that you love, but it will keep driving your blood pressure upwards.<\/p>\n
And it can kill you. That\u2019s also not a joke. But you knew that already.<\/p>\n
High blood pressure is a common problem across the world, with over 1 billion people suffering from this \u2018silent killer\u2019 condition. So what is one of the major risk factor for developing high blood pressure? Excessive salt, experts would say. While this is common news, new research has discovered that it also works the other way round \u2013 people with high blood pressure generally preferred food with high salt content. It\u2019s a double whammy.<\/p>\n
For the study, 118 participants were chosen and divided into 4 groups. Two groups consisted of men and women in their early 30s, some of whom had high blood pressure and others who did not have high blood pressure. The other two groups comprised of healthy as well as high blood pressure sufferers \u2013elderly people mostly in their 70\u2019s.<\/p>\n
All the participants were offered three types of French bread and asked to choose one after tasting, based on their preference. The breads differed in the amount of salt added \u2013 light, medium and excessive salt content.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the healthy people in the 30\u2019s group who did not have high blood pressure chose the light salty version, and the healthy people in the 70\u2019s chose the medium salty French version.<\/p>\n
Now for the clincher: people with high blood pressure in both the groups preferred the excessive salty bread.<\/p>\n
A variation of the same experiment was conducted two weeks later. The people in all the groups were offered the same three versions of French bread of different degrees of saltiness \u2013 but his time all the breads were seasoned with oregano.<\/p>\n
This time, more people showed a preference for the light salty version compared to the earlier experiment.<\/p>\n
The research basically proves two things: people with high blood pressure generally seem to have a preference for foods with high salt content, which could be an acquired tendency.<\/p>\n
But hey, here\u2019s the good news: spices like oregano can be a good and healthy replacement for salt. Neat, eh?<\/p>\n