Among the 3,612 racially and ethnically diverse participants, those with the lowest incomes and those who were unemployed had higher phosphate concentrations in their blood than participants with higher income and rates of employment. Furthermore, there was no difference in phosphate levels by race when only blacks and whites in the lowest income group were compared. The investigators concluded that the known racial difference in phosphate levels is largely driven by differences in socioeconomic status.

Take-home message: "For low-income patients, access to healthy food choices is limited, so their diet tends to consist of processed and fast foods heavily enriched with highly-absorbable phosphorus additives," said Gutierrez. "The amount of phosphorus additives in food is not always listed, so people unknowingly ingest more phosphorus than they probably should."

Source :  Journal of the American Society of Nephrology