title: Does salt increase thirst?
abstract: Our diet is believed to be overly rich in sodium, and it is commonly believed that sodium intake increases drinking. Hence the concern of a possible contribution of dietary sodium to beverage intake which in turn may contribute to obesity and ill health. Here we examine whether voluntary, acute intake of a sodium load, as occurs in routine eating and snacking, increases thirst and drinking. We find that after ingesting 3.5 or 4.4 g NaCl (men) and 1.9 or 3.7 g (women) on nuts during 15 minutes, there is no increase in thirst or drinking of freely available water in the following 2 h compared with eating similar amounts of sugared or unflavored nuts. This suggests that routine ingestion of boluses of salt (~30-40% of daily intake for men, ~ 20-40% for women) does not increase drinking. Methodological concerns such as about nuts as vehicle for sodium suggest further research to establish the generalizability of this unexpected result.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel. Electronic address: Micah.leshem@psy.haifa.ac.il.
authors.forename: Micah
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leshem
mesh_terms: D001628:Beverages; D015992:Body Mass Index; D019422:Dietary Sucrose / Q000008:administration & dosage; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009754:Nuts; D017673:Sodium Chloride, Dietary / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013894:Thirst / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D019422:Dietary Sucrose; D017673:Sodium Chloride, Dietary
keywords: Drinking; Food; Human; Salt; Sodium; Thirst