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It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#51

Post by MegaDeKay »

clay_to_n wrote: post #50
bluedino wrote: post #49

There's a war on salt? Whole foods has an entire wall of salt. There are entire physical and online stores selling nothing but salts. Sea salt? Would you like it from France, Alaska, or Iceland? How about colored salt? Pink from the Himalayas, green jasmine salt, blue salt that I'm not sure where it's from. Smoked salt? Salt bath scrubs? Salt bars for cleansing? Heck, you can even buy a salt lamp .

A war by doctors, not businesses. I'd consider it "common knowledge" that salt raises blood pressure and that you should eat less salt if you have high blood pressure. My father and at least a couple other 50+ year old people I know try to limit their salt intake for health reasons.

This "common knowledge" is incorrect. It applies only if you have sodium-sensitive hypertension, and chances are, you don't.

http://www.gbhealthwatch.com/Trait-Salt-Sensitivity.php

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#52

Post by SixSigma »

vlehto wrote: post #36

This is one of those "listen to your body" things I'm doing. I've done pretty physical construction work during summers. Drinking 6L of water during the day in the process. After three weeks, sucking grains of sea salt tasted better than any candy. Until they suddenly didn't. On the other hand, during the winter pickles started to taste really bad. I try to eat my salt so that I actually taste it. When you mix it eve…

That sounds good for you. But there's evidence that gut microbes work against your body to serve themselves rather than your health

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#53

Post by dschiptsov »

dschiptsov wrote: post #37
brianpan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your question is, but the complicated thing with blood pressure is that it is regulated by your body. So if you do something or eat something that raises your blood pressure, your body will respond by lowering your blood pressure. And if you do things to lower your blood pressure, as it says in the article, your body will respond by releasing renin and aldosterone to increase your blood pressure.

According to the very basics of human physiology, excess of Na in blood stream will cause water molecules to leave cells and bind to sodium, which causes dehydration of cells and higher blood pressure, to which kidney should respond. That's why we feel thirsty after salty foods - to take more water into the system so eventually cells will go back to balance. Prolonged exess of sodium which is maintained by habitual c…

NaCl, sorry.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#54

Post by arnoooooo »

dnate wrote: post #23

What I find interesting is that this issue about sodium being unhealthy never really reached Europe (or at least Germany). While the US was advertising "low sodium" on their products we are still mostly advertising "low fat" and have some "low carb" pioneers. It seems to me that the whole "sodium is bad" scheme was a poorly supported health tip gone viral.

France has passed a law a few years ago that makes it mandatory to have the phrase "For your health, limit your salt, sugar and fat intake" on all ads for food.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#55

Post by jdkuepper »

I think it's important to look beyond hypertension before completely ending the war on salt.

Very high salt intake may influence the risk of H. pylori infection - the main cause of stomach cancer. It increases the risk of atrophic gastritis (chronic inflammation of the stomach), which makes the stomach more prone to infection, and increases the susceptibility of mucosa to neoplastic change once an infection occurs.

If you think nobody consumes this level of salt, the Chinese and Japanese had extremely high levels of stomach cancer decades ago before reducing their salt intake and preservative consumption. To some extent, these problems persist to this day. Completely ignoring salt (especially in convenience foods) could reignite the issue.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#56

Post by gadders »

marcosdumay wrote: post #48
gadders wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a public health thing, no? If they tell 10,000 people to decrease their salt intake, they've saved (made up figure) 10 lives. So they say everyone decrease salt, rather than the more nuanced message which is "Salt might be dangerous for some people."

> ...the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease When you have no idea about the consequences of an act, the right thing to do is not to go out and tell everyone to do it. How many of the 10,000 are you endangering by cutting their sodium intake? Worse yet, you are not cutting their potassium intake. What…

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm arguing that they should be explicit in their message and not get everyone to take (often unneeded) action.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#57

Post by drumdance »

jdkuepper wrote: post #55

I think it's important to look beyond hypertension before completely ending the war on salt. Very high salt intake may influence the risk of H. pylori infection - the main cause of stomach cancer. It increases the risk of atrophic gastritis (chronic inflammation of the stomach), which makes the stomach more prone to infection, and increases the susceptibility of mucosa to neoplastic change once an infection occurs. I…

> (especially in convenience foods)

I think this is the key. Most salty processed foods have enormous amounts of salt that you'd never add if you were cooking it yourself. Same with sugar in sweet snacks.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#58

Post by beachstartup »

buu700 wrote: post #47
narag wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who eats strictly keto (low-carb/high-fat), How much time have you been doing it?

About two years now, and I'd been doing it less strictly / on-and-off for a year and a half before that. I've definitely noticed feeling much more focused and productive since starting, and it also helped with dropping from 210 to a bit over 150 pounds in the first few months of 2014. Also anecdotal, my cofounder at my current startup Cyph has been on keto for close to a year now, and in that time has had a heart con…

+1 for keto here.

the only real downside is that it's extremely difficult to maintain the discipline to avoid carbs! also the social aspects.

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#59

Post by MrTonyD »

tallanvor wrote: post #19
MrTonyD wrote: post #13

I'm another person who was avoiding salt - thinking it was bad for me - and then discovered that I wasn't getting enough salt. My body's temperature regulation was a mess - hot & not sweating with a dry mouth and dry sinus. So I started putting a teaspoon of salt into my morning fruit smoothy - and suddenly all the symptoms went away. I wish I had known sooner. I've started using sea salt exclusively, since grocery s…

This is just wrong. Brine wells have been used for centuries, and industrial mining of salt, while newer, has still occurred for hundreds of years. Further, sea salt and table salt both contain approximately 40% sodium. If you prefer the taste or texture of sea salt, that's fine, but don't claim that sea salt is inherently better for you, because we have studies that show this isn't the case.

Well, I'm no expert on salt - but as a Neti pot user I can instantly tell when I'm using grocery store salt. And, coincidentally, I worked for several years at the shore beside salt collection fields. We all used to joke that we hoped the salt we bought wasn't from those fields - since the water was known to be very polluted (and fishing was often prohibited.) So I can't take seriously any claim that grocery store salt is the same as any given sea salt. And there are plenty of studies showing significant differences. And, at this point, the only studies I've seen about grocery store salt just tout their purity of NaCl (which, again, is not historically what salt was), and claim that the only significant consideration about salt is the things I don't care about (typically their definition of "purity").

Re: It's Time to End the War on Salt (2011)

#60

Post by buu700 »

beachstartup wrote: post #58
buu700 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About two years now, and I'd been doing it less strictly / on-and-off for a year and a half before that. I've definitely noticed feeling much more focused and productive since starting, and it also helped with dropping from 210 to a bit over 150 pounds in the first few months of 2014. Also anecdotal, my cofounder at my current startup Cyph has been on keto for close to a year now, and in that time has had a heart con…

+1 for keto here. the only real downside is that it's extremely difficult to maintain the discipline to avoid carbs! also the social aspects.

I would actually say that it's extremely easy, but only because any carb cravings I may have are met with the flour/sugar substitutes and pre-baked goods from LC Foods (holdthecarbs.com), along with other common carb replacements like shirataki noodles. It's pretty nice that I can freely eat awesome dishes like pizza with the crust fried in clarified butter that people who aren't on a high-fat diet would never touch.

That said, it would certainly take some discipline without something like LC Foods, and I suppose there's also the issue that keto kinda forces you to become an amateur chef (but I at least enjoy that aspect and don't find that it's super time-consuming).

While the social aspect is of course an issue, one interesting thing socially is that anything I cook for guests at home is LCHF, and people are always shocked when I mention it in passing later on; e.g. one reaction to my stevia ice cream was something like "I thought it was weird that I wasn't getting a headache like I usually do after eating sugar!".

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