Tonight we are learning just how early in life the problem of high blood pressure can develop. Sixty-seven million American adults have it and we learn more today about how the problem is starting with our kids, taking in weight too much salt and the results are predictably bad. Our report tonight from our chief science correspondent Robert Bazell.“Food is prepared,

and then wash your hands.”Petercom insists on a healthy diet for her kids because of a family history of heart disease and stroke. Her effort includes limiting salt.

“Whole foods, you know, have very little sodium. Fresh foods, and vegetables, you know, lean meats, things like that and staying away from the processed foods.”

But too few families are making this effort. The Centers for Disease Control surveyed more than 6,200 kids aged 8 to 18. Though the recommended daily sodium intake for children and adults is 2,300 mg a day, kids are getting an average of more than 3,300.For the first time it’s been demonstrated that kids in the US are consuming more salt than anyone ever thought they did. And that high salt intake is associated with high blood pressure even in children.

Blood pressure in kids went up from 1.3 to 2.4 times normal, depending on salt intake. In kids already overweight or obese, blood pressure went up as much as 5 times.

If you don’t exercise, and you are overweight, you don’t eat well, you consume pre-packaged foods, all of those things tend to go together.

More school lunch programs have been working to cut salt. But snack foods and fast foods are big concerns. One serving of pretzels (椒鹽卷餅) or potato chips, a Big Mac, a Whopper with Cheese and a KFC chicken breast, each has about half the 2,300 mg, daily sodium requirement.

Doctors worry that the taste for salt usually forms in childhood, and becomes a lifelong habit, making it especially important for children to consume as little of it as possible.

As for 12-year-old Madeline Kombi, “I have had unhealthy food but I don’t like the taste of them.”

Doctors wish far more kids shared her taste.