Everything in this world needs the right balance especially when it comes to food intake. Every food that enters our body will have an effect in the short or long term. Therefore, proper and good food intake is very important for human beings to stay healthy.
Every year, different types of food have evolved in terms of recipes, shapes, colors and more. For example, we have various types of ‘roti canai’ such as ‘roti planta’, ‘roti sardine’, ‘roti telur’ and many more. Based on this, it shows that human beings constantly evolve in our tastes, whether it comes to food, fashion or even technology.
Have you heard that there is a content creator doing live streaming on his Tik Tok account by consuming four packets of salt as a challenge from the community?
Quite hard to believe isn’t it?
This is a true story that happened in the neighbouring country of Indonesia. A man named Anggun Supriadi decided to eat 4 packets of salt to accept the challenge from the community which promised him a gift of 30 million rupiahs (RM8,573).
Anggun is a content creator. He is from Palembang, Indonesia. He became famous for Mukbang videos or eating in front of the camera. He has 3.4 million followers on Tiktok and has amassed a total of 38.3 million likes.
For the viewers, Anggun chooses to eat foods that are different from the usual, such as peppers, red chilli juice, salt and even raw eggs.
Anggun usually does live streaming on his Tik Tok account, @anggun_supriadi, where he puts some food on the table and then starts eating the menu chosen by his audience at the time. If Anggun can meet the demand of the audience, then he will be rewarded with money, mobile phones and so on.
On March 17, 2021, Anggun decided to accept a challenge from netizens to eat four packets of salt which promised a prize of 30 million rupiah (RM8,573). The video went viral on social media and has been viewed more than 22.3 million times.
What? Eat 4 packets of salt? Impossible!
Don’t believe it? Neither did we! If you need to see it to know it happened for real, here’s the video that shows Anggun eating four packets of salt.
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In the comments section, netizens did not like what he was doing because consuming too much salt can lead to serious health problems.
“He is willing to eat salt because he wants money. For the sake of followers, be willing to do stupid things. These are the types of people who will not live long,” said the netizen.
Some say that the video was edited before being uploaded to Tik Tok as in the video it is clear that cut after the cut was done to shorten the duration of the video. Some suspect that the salt he put in his mouth is removed in those gaps, giving an illusion of a successful ‘Mukbang’.
For readers who do not know what ‘Mukbang’ is, we will explain the meaning of ‘Mukbang’ briefly. ‘Mukbang’ is a word from Korea and has been used all over the world, especially on social media. According to Wikipedia, ‘Mukbang’ also known as an eating show, is an online audiovisual broadcast in which a host consumes large quantities of food while interacting with the audience.
The anxiety shown by society is good because consuming too much salt can affect a person. Here we will state what are the short-term effects and long-term effects when a person has consumed a lot of salt.
Before we peel back the effect, we will explain what salt is.
Salt is made up of about 40% sodium and 60% chloride. It’s also used to flavour and preserve foods.
Sodium is an essential mineral for muscle and nerve function. It also helps the body’s water and mineral balance when combined with chloride.
Despite its vital functions, however, consuming too much salt may have negative short- and long-term implications. So here’s what Locum Press thinks happened to Anggun’s body – if he really ate those 4 packets of salt.
Effects of excessive salt intake in the short term
1. Extreme thirst
A salty meal can also leave you with a dry mouth or make you thirsty. Another way the body attempts to correct the sodium-to-water ratio is by encouraging you to drink.
As a result of the increased fluid intake, you increase urination more frequently than normal.
Failure to drink enough water after consuming a lot of salt, on the other hand, will cause your sodium levels to rise above a healthy amount, resulting in hypernatremia.
In an attempt to dilute the excess sodium, hypernatremia will cause water to leak out of your cells and into your blood. This fluid change, if left unchecked, can cause confusion, seizures, coma, and even death.
Restlessness, breathing and sleeping difficulties, and decreased urination are all signs of hypernatremia.
2. Retention of water
You will first realize that you are feeling bloated or puffy. This happens because your kidneys want to keep your body’s sodium-to-water ratio at a certain amount. To do so, they retain more water to compensate for the additional sodium you consumed.
Swelling, mainly in the hands and feet, can occur as a result of the increased water retention, and it can cause you to weigh more than normal.
3. Increased blood pressure
A salt-rich meal will also cause the blood vessels and arteries to dilate, allowing more blood to flow into them. This can cause a brief increase in blood pressure.
However, these consequences might not be felt by all. According to a study, people who are salt-tolerant do not experience an increase in blood pressure after eating salty foods.
Factors such as genetics and hormones are believed to affect a person’s salt sensitivity. Ageing and obesity can amplify the effects of high salt diets on blood pressure.
These reasons could explain why not everyone’s blood pressure increases when they eat a salt-rich diet.
Excessive salt intake has long-term effects
1. Blood pressure can rise
According to study, salt-rich diets boost blood pressure, and lowering the salt content of a person’s diet will help them lower their blood pressure.
Two major reviews, for example, showed that reducing salt consumption by 4.4 grams a day can reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure (the top and bottom numbers of reading) by up to 4.18 and 2.06 mm Hg, respectively.
However, by comparing people with elevated blood pressure to people with average blood pressure, the reported decreases were almost two times greater.
Furthermore, these effects are thought to be much greater in salt-sensitive people than in non-salt-sensitive people. Obesity and ageing are thought to amplify the impact of salt-rich diets on blood pressure.
2. Risk of stomach cancer may be increased
According to a study involving more than 268,000 people, those who consume 3 grams of salt per day have a 68 per cent higher risk of stomach cancer than those who consume 1 gram of salt per day.
Another research claims that people who consume a lot of salt have a two-fold higher risk of stomach cancer than those who consume less. Even, though there is no precise definition of what constitutes a high or low salt intake in this report.
The mechanism underlying salt’s anti-cancer effects is unknown. Salt-rich diets, on the other hand, can increase the risk of stomach cancer by causing ulcers or inflammation of the stomach lining, according to experts.
3. Effect on the risk of heart disease and early death
The relation between high-salt diets, heart disease, and early death is still up for debate.
According to some research, excessive salt consumption raises blood pressure and causes blood vessels and arteries to stiffen. As a consequence, these changes can increase the risk of heart disease and death.
Participants who consumed less than 5.8 grams of salt per day had the lowest mortality rates, while those who consumed more than 15 grams of salt per day had the highest.
With this description of the effects of excessive salt intake, we expect you all to be careful in determining the type of diet. We believe that everything we put into the body will affect our body in the short or long term.
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