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Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#91

Post by rsync »

e40 wrote: post #73
rsync wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest." Allow me to suggest a further path forward that is superior to "trusting your gut": Establish a regular, very high output exercise regime - incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training. Under such a regimen, you will notice what food doe…

incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training And there are studies that show walking is just as good, and it certainly wears down the body less than your alternative.

"And there are studies that show walking is just as good, and it certainly wears down the body less than your alternative."

I have seen those studies and I tend to agree with them. My own personal experience supports the notion that walking is extremely healthful and provides almost all of the benefits you have in mind.

That is, if you're using measures like "do I feel good" "do I look good" "have I kept off those 20 pounds".

I however believe that there are more important measures: "can I run a few miles for help" "can I perform CPR for 10 minutes continuously" "can I lift and manipulate this charged hoseline".

I owe it to you and your family to be able to do these things. I measure your worth, to some degree, on your ability to do these things for me and my family. I don't care about what you look like or how many steps you did today.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#92

Post by noam87 »

stdbrouw wrote: post #67
nommm-nommm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. When I was an athlete I had a horrible diet which consisted of mostly boxed pasta and I ate junk food every day. Didn't hurt my athletic ability noticeably. I try hard to watch what I eat now.

This was actually tested in a study last year, which found that cheeseburgers are just as good for recovery as expensive sports drinks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/0...

This bogus study keeps getting cited and misrepresented:

> Gatorade, chewable energy cubes, organic peanut butter and power bars.

All of those are junk food. Drinking a large bottle of Gatorade is exactly equivalent in sugar content to drinking a can of pop, energy and power bars are also basically crap and sugar with some "vitamins" or "soy protein" added.

So yeah... this study found that eating one form of junk food is no different than eating another form of (cleverly marketed) junk food.

> Eleven males completed two experimental trials in a randomized, counterbalanced order. Each trial included a 90-min glycogen depletion ride followed by a 4-hr recovery period.

Wow, such thorough and newsworthy research: eleven males worked out twice for 90 minutes and ate two different types of crap.

This is just another example of the sorry state of modern clickbait research.

An alarming number of studies out there are nothing but noise, especially in the medical fields, where it does actual damage. Here's a good talk on this issue: https://youtu.be/GPYzY9I78CI "Reproducible Research: True or False?"

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#93

Post by _0w8t »

dpark wrote: post #85
_0w8t wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One have to specifically drink plain water with table sugar or fructose - anything else reverses the effects, search the Shangri-La diet for details.

Sugar water tastes horrible. I'd have to be literally starving before I'd choose sugar water over plain water. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to overconsume. It just means that no one wants to consume this. I'd probably lose weight drinking sugar water because it would kill my appetite by inducing nausea. The same applies to your starch comment. Yeah, it's hard to overconsume plain rice if you eat it with no…

With no negative impacts on health one can eat just rice or potatoes with salt or herbs as one please for months with no weight gain unless one is rather lean. That shows that there is food where body feedback loop works nicely preventing over-consumption without any conscious limits on the amount of food.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#94

Post by jdnier »

I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension.

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a...

Another salt video looking at conflicts of interest:

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake...

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#95

Post by yk »

hardlianotion wrote: post #2

"the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook." Or a sign that the green lines were drawn first, and test red and blue overlaid.

Came here to mention that. Additionally these findings are easily explained if we assume that salt has some positive and some negative effects occurring in different parts of the body. Say salt has some positive effects for the liver and negative effects for the heart, then a paper on liver disease will mostly cite positive studies about salt, that is it cites studies on the liver, and a paper on heart diseases will cite mostly negative.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#96

Post by DannoHung »

rsync wrote: post #52
static_noise wrote: post #17

I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process. Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what caus…

"Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest." Allow me to suggest a further path forward that is superior to "trusting your gut": Establish a regular, very high output exercise regime - incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training. Under such a regimen, you will notice what food doe…

That's not true at all. http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-di...

In this case, he's fucking Mr Fusion.

You probably mean something like... train for muscle growth or something or to run (not win) a marathon.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#97

Post by logfromblammo »

In lieu of any conclusive evidence that has percolated down to the mainstream news media, I'm just going to operate under the entirely baseless hypothesis that the human body can tolerate any amount of sodium above its absolute minimum required for basic functioning, provided that it is consumed within a certain range of proportions with potassium, calcium, magnesium, and water.

I suspect that the mineral content of seawater diluted to 1.5% salinity (from 3.5%) would have a bit too much sodium, and not enough potassium, but would otherwise be safe to consume in any quantity.

Needless to say, testing this hypothesis on humans might raise a few ethical concerns. Finding enough people who already drink nothing but diluted seawater to claim significance might also prove difficult.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#98

Post by dpark »

_0w8t wrote: post #93
dpark wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar water tastes horrible. I'd have to be literally starving before I'd choose sugar water over plain water. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to overconsume. It just means that no one wants to consume this. I'd probably lose weight drinking sugar water because it would kill my appetite by inducing nausea. The same applies to your starch comment. Yeah, it's hard to overconsume plain rice if you eat it with no…

With no negative impacts on health one can eat just rice or potatoes with salt or herbs as one please for months with no weight gain unless one is rather lean. That shows that there is food where body feedback loop works nicely preventing over-consumption without any conscious limits on the amount of food.

"No negative impacts on health" is a bold claim. If you eat nothing but rice (with salt[1] and herbs) for months, you'll end up with a number of vitamin deficiencies. You'll also end up critically deficient in certain amino acids eventually, because rice does not provide a complete protein profile. Weight is not the only factor in overall health.

I'll point out that Atkins makes similar claims for a fat-heavy diet. In essence, they claim that if you cut carbs entirely, you can eat as much as you want. In reality, people on Atkins tend to just eat less because the diet gets so monotonous.

[1] I misread initially and thought you said no salt. Sorry about the confusion there.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#99

Post by _0w8t »

dpark wrote: post #98
_0w8t wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With no negative impacts on health one can eat just rice or potatoes with salt or herbs as one please for months with no weight gain unless one is rather lean. That shows that there is food where body feedback loop works nicely preventing over-consumption without any conscious limits on the amount of food.

"No negative impacts on health" is a bold claim. If you eat nothing but rice (with salt[1] and herbs) for months, you'll end up with a number of vitamin deficiencies. You'll also end up critically deficient in certain amino acids eventually, because rice does not provide a complete protein profile. Weight is not the only factor in overall health. I'll point out that Atkins makes similar claims for a fat-heavy diet. I…

Rice is amino-deficient only for rats, it has all 8 essential for human amino-acids. But I should wrote "brown unpolished rice" as that contains much more minerals.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#100

Post by blacksmith_tb »

brianwawok wrote: post #62
noxToken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products I assume by highly processed, you mean foods altered in such that they are now high in fats, salt, sugars or some combination thereof. I ask, because the term processed gets thrown around (in my experience) for highly preserved foods like canned meat to flash frozen frozen vegetables in the freezer aisle. The former is o…

Freezing is a form of processing, but it is a very light processing. Take some Oats off the ground. Cool unprocessed. Mill it a tiny bit to help it cook more easily into steel cut oats. Minimally processed. Grind it down into instant oatmeal - Heavily processes. Add some chemicals and put in a test tube to turn into some weird kind of artificial sweetener? Highly processed. I try to go as low on the chain as possible…

This seems like a fairly extreme interpretation of 'processing' - I haven't seen anything that suggests there's a nutritional difference between steel cut, rolled, or quick oats. Human beings have 'processed' their foods along these lines for more than 10,000 years, as opposed to say, making Twinkies.
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