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Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

theguardian.com

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Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#111

Post by tomhoward »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #98
anfilt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to eat lets say a pound of salt (probably lethal). You probably would have to be rushed to the ER. Your body can only process things so fast and deal with changes so quickly. Obviously, a person would not eat a pound of salt in one sitting. So you body can not dump any excess salt. It can dump excess to a point.

You argument is pointless. Nobody would voluntarily consume that much salt. The same as nobody will drink sea water unless desperate. Once past the point of satiation you would have no desire for more. Hypernatremia will still be a long way off in normal healthy people.

Your claim was that, for practical purposes, it's not possible to have too much salt, as your kidneys will process any excess.

The respondent's point was that there is a threshold at which the amount of salt ingested is too much for what the body can handle.

Obviously a pound is an unrealistic extreme, but it illustrates the point: there is a threshold.

More realistically, it would not be unusual for somebody to have a daily salt intake that is a little over the threshold of what the kidneys can easily handle, and bit by bit, harm can develop, just as is the case with too much sugar, too much fat, too much alcohol, or too much of anything in any organic system.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#112

Post by tacotime »

cies wrote: post #74
pkaye wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about between butter and sugar? Which is worse?

I'd avoid both. But if I have to pick one to eat 4 tblsp from every day, I pick sugar hands down.

I think that's a bad comparison. Intuitively this might feel less healthy because you are consuming more than twice as many calories with the butter. Double check your intuition on this one. People on high fat diets tend to eat less volume as compared to those on high carb diets for a good reason. Fat is more than twice as calorie dense as compared to sugar.

1 cup of sugar = 201 g. 1 cup of Butter = 227 grams. 201/227 = a given volume of sugar is about 89% as heavy as the same volume of butter.

1 gram of sugar contains 4 calories. 1 gram of butter is about 7.2 calories (a gram of fat is 9 calories and butter is roughly 85% fat + milk solids and water). 4/7.2 = a gram of sugar contains about 56% as many calories as a gram of butter.

4 tbps of sugar = 50 grams = 200 calories

4 tbps of butter = 56.8 grams = 408 calories

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#113

Post by barry-cotter »

NoPicklez wrote: post #75
JeanMarcS wrote: post #31

During the heat wave in France this summer, messages to old persons were to drink regularly (which sometimes they forget) So a quarter of medical consultations related to elders and heat was for a lack of salt [0]. From Google translate it’s call hyponatremia. So as stated in other comments, moderation, may be, lack, bad idea. I’m actually in Ireland. They seem to have taken the salt part very seriously, as everythin…

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps. The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy. It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are ba…

> The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy.

No, they don’t. If you don’t have hypertension you can have as much salt in your diet as you want. Northern Chinese food is really salty. They’re fine. Stop moralising.

If you don’t have hypertension add salt as you please.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#114

Post by rhapsodic »

goldenkey wrote: post #95
NoPicklez wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps. The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy. It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are ba…

Salt really only tastes good when you need salt. It's satiation depends on the body's current levels/needs.

>Salt really only tastes good when you need salt. It's satiation depends on the body's current levels/needs.

So people who scarf down potato chips by the bag are low on salt?

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#116

Post by barry-cotter »

cies wrote: post #69
1stranger wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK, butter is still worse then no butter (and more calories from whole plant foods instead). Many would dispute this if you're alluding to it being heavy in saturated fat which there's heavy dispute over. > Margarine may or may not be worse than butter (I think it is worse). Doesn't seem consistent with your logic of less refined is better. > If you want to eat for health, look into WFPB, they have a lot of scie…

I see a many clear reasons to avoid/reduce any processed fat (oils, butter, etc). It is not part of what primates ate, so good chance we're not well adapted to it. It is too calorie dense. It blocks insulin. It becomes fat (carbs barely become fat), especially when combined with carbs (as is common). It often comes with cholesterol. > Doesn't seem consistent with your logic of less refined is better. That's why I con…

> It is not part of what primates ate, so good chance we're not well adapted to it.

It’s animal fat. It gets broken down into glycerides.

> It is too calorie dense.

If you need fewer calories eat less.

> It blocks insulin.

Insulin is part of glucose metabolism. Dietary fat does not effect it.

> It becomes fat (carbs barely become fat), especially when combined with carbs (as is common).

Untrue. If you have a calorie deficit you’ll lose weight, a surplus you’ll gain it. Whether the energy comes from fats or carbs is irrelevant.

> It often comes with cholesterol.

Serum cholesterol and dietary cholesterol are unrelated.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#117

Post by xzel »

cies wrote: post #72
dogma1138 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High carb or low carb high protein diets which any low fat diet would turn into is a terrible idea in the both short and long term as they are glucose focused you want to avoid high blood sugar and high insulin levels since insulin causes your body to store fat. Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not.

All primates eat high carb. They are not fat. It is fat that blocks insulin on yr cells. No (or little) fat and you can absorb your carbs as nature intended. > Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not. I agree. It is the refined fats that are bad.

This is just plain categorically wrong. All primates DO NOT eat high carb diets. Its not both just an over generalization because each species of primate have different diets (as well as regional diets) but many of them will eat nuts, meat, berries and other things.

See dogma1138's child post to this parent as well as his other responses to cies other posts in this thread.

No offense cies but your posts here reek of soccer-mom-esque health blog level of basic research and espousing of ideas as facts.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#118

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

NoPicklez wrote: post #75
JeanMarcS wrote: post #31

During the heat wave in France this summer, messages to old persons were to drink regularly (which sometimes they forget) So a quarter of medical consultations related to elders and heat was for a lack of salt [0]. From Google translate it’s call hyponatremia. So as stated in other comments, moderation, may be, lack, bad idea. I’m actually in Ireland. They seem to have taken the salt part very seriously, as everythin…

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps. The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy. It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are ba…

Sugar is not essential for the human body.

There is no necessary carbohydrates, whereas you require some amount of fat and protein to survive. Consider humans surviving in cold area with literally no fruit except in Summer (at some extreme level: human thriving in area with no accessible plants to be directly ingested).

Fruits are not the enemy, but keep in mind their wide (mangos in Northern Europe!), year-long availability (strawberries in February!), along with their nutrition value (high in sugar) is a product of modernity.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#119

Post by barry-cotter »

cies wrote: post #72
dogma1138 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High carb or low carb high protein diets which any low fat diet would turn into is a terrible idea in the both short and long term as they are glucose focused you want to avoid high blood sugar and high insulin levels since insulin causes your body to store fat. Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not.

All primates eat high carb. They are not fat. It is fat that blocks insulin on yr cells. No (or little) fat and you can absorb your carbs as nature intended. > Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not. I agree. It is the refined fats that are bad.

The Inuit and other Eskimos ate basically nothing but meat and fat in their traditional lifestyle. Not all primates eat high carb. The Neanderthals didn’t either. Hominids have been eating diets high in meat and fat for a really long time.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#120

Post by barry-cotter »

nonbel wrote: post #88
jarfil wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nutrition is, for the most part, not science at all. Studies are not just financed by obvious interests in the result, but also they use really poor population samples with horrible falsability and repeatability issues. The fact that we still don't have a fully functional human body model to test theories on, doesn't help either.

"The fact that we still don't have a fully functional human body model to test theories on, doesn't help either." What does this mean?

Model as in model organism, like fruit flies in genetics, or mice in biology. Lacking a model organism means we can’t do much in the way of experiments and that means we learn much slower.
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