Research

Hormonal

Higher salt taste preference is positively correlated with systolic blood pressure, body weight, and BMI following consumption of an ultra-processed diet.

If you prefer salty foods and eat an ultra-processed diet, you may have higher blood pressure and body weight. Monitoring your salt preference and overall diet quality might be beneficial.

ModerateSupportsLOW confidence
A positive correlation was observed between salt taste preference and systolic BP (r = 0.59; P = 0.01), BW (r = 0.47, P = 0.04), and BMI (r = 0.50, P = 0.03) following consumption of the ultra-processed diet.
Rosario B. Jaime-Lara et al. · Chemical Senses · 2023

Why this rating

Small sample size (N=20) and exploratory nature limit generalizability.

Source

No significant salt or sweet taste preference or sensitivity differences following ad libitum consumption of ultra-processed and unprocessed diets: a randomized controlled pilot study

Rosario B. Jaime-Lara et al. · Chemical Senses · 2023

DOI 10.1093/chemse/bjad007

crossover · n=20Cited 9×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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