I recently saw an episode of “Monsters Inside Me” on Animal Planet. One case involved a toddler who suddenly didn’t want to eat her favorite foods or much of anything else. Her parents found her sucking the salt off of pretzels (without eating them) and eating the cat’s food (apparently because it’s high in salt).
Among the doctors they consulted was an endocrinologist. He couldn’t find out what was wrong, but he advised them to give her as much salt as she wanted.
After other strange symptoms arose, she was finally diagnosed with toxocariasis from the roundworm Toxocara canis. Treatment for that was evenually successful.
The program did not explain exactly why the parasite caused this salt craving. I Googled around and found loss of appetite is one of the known symptoms for this, but there’s nothing about salt craving. Was her body just trying to get salt it’d normally get in food? Or is there another reason?
I don’t know if there is anything to this or not but I have a few freinds with blood sugar issues and it seems they salt there food much more than I would. My father was diabetic and had to conciously avoid salt because he always claimed his food was not salted.
Maybe the toddler had ‘pica’ (craving and ingesting bizarre things like clay, ice, etc.) - that might explain the apparent salt craving. But, if the toddler was also eating dirt off the ground (a common pica phenomenon), he/she could easily acquire toxocariasis by doing so (since the toxo eggs are commonly found on the ground, or anywhere else dogs and cats poop).
Actually, commercial cat food, especially seafood-based, tends to be very high in salt. A lot of the cheap brands are essentially junk food nutrition/taste-wise and can create eating disorders in some cats who are fed on it exclusively (such as being unable to recognize unseasoned chicken as food due to the subtle flavor).