Excessive salt intake significantly affects high blood pressure. According to the 2017 National Health and Nutrition Survey, the average daily salt intake for adults is 10.8 g for men and 9.1 g for women. This indicates that the benchmark set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (8.0 g for men and 7.0 g for women) has not been reached. Fruit Granola cereals （Frugra® by Calbee Co., Ltd.） have a low salt content of 0.5 g per meal and are expected to reduce the average salt intake by about 3 g if a general breakfast is replaced by granola. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of replacing breakfast with granola on salt intake and blood pressure.
Study 1. Healthy volunteers over 20 years old were recruited, and their breakfasts were replaced with granola for 2 weeks. The changes in the estimated salt intake before and after the study were analyzed. Subgroup analyses showed that those individuals with high salt intake had decreased salt intake of 1.14 g/day when the breakfast was replaced by granola.
Study 2. We recruited office workers over the age of 20 years and analyzed their blood pressure before and after replacing their breakfasts by granola for 8 weeks. The group whose breakfast was replaced with granola (FGR group) had a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure. In addition, the stratified analysis of normal hypertension (130/85) and grade I hypertension (140/90) showed that the HT-FGR group had a significant decrease in both systolic and diastolic blood pressures.
Our findings suggest that replacing breakfast by granola decreased salt intake and caused a possible decrease in blood pressure due to salt reduction.
