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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

#151

Post by j88439h84 »

rapsey wrote: post #146
rossdavidh wrote: post #129

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

> Then, there are other fields, like economics and nutrition, where the basic fundamentals of the field are a pile of mud. Practically all social sciences are suspect and really have no business calling themselves sciences.

What are your criteria?

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

#152

Post by mercer »

rossdavidh wrote: post #129

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

Can you elaborate on the 'pile of mud' fundamentals of economics? I've always been inclined to agree, but then I consider my biases in this regard, but also my own field, psychology, and pause.

If you subdivide 'science' into various fields, psychology is definitely on much shakier grounds than has often ben assumed. But if you subdivide 'psychology', the picture isn't as clear. I'd say marketing and the broader field of persuasion/propaganda, or something like group dynamics, has a much firmer basis in reality than, say, psychopathology or evolutionary psychology.

I'm very curious if people who are well-versed in economics can make similar distinctions, because I find it hard to believe it's 'all' mud.

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

#153

Post by ramblerman »

j88439h84 wrote: post #151
rapsey wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, there are other fields, like economics and nutrition, where the basic fundamentals of the field are a pile of mud. Practically all social sciences are suspect and really have no business calling themselves sciences.

What are your criteria?

I'm not OP, but Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability places a lot of the social sciences in the domain of myth vs actual science.

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

#154

Post by jplayer01 »

tomhoward wrote: post #111
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The kidneys (in a healthy state) are able to cope with far more salt than anybody in modern civilization eats or will ever eat in a day. It's not worth talking about the limit (it's in the tens of grams, far above the <10g that majority of people consume).

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

#155

Post by edanm »

rossdavidh wrote: post #129

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

> Then, there are other fields, like economics and nutrition, where the basic fundamentals of the field are a pile of mud.

That's incredibly dismissive of these fields. I can't speak much to nutrition, but economics is not a "pile of mud", definitely not its fundamentals.

Do you have any reason to think that it is other than (kind-of-literally) mud-slinging?

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

#156

Post by edanm »

macspoofing wrote: post #54
clumsysmurf wrote: post #16

And to play devil's advocate, the opposite findings from just this June https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180622012101.h...

Nutrition Science is a huge mess even though it is a core part of human health. As in, it is a total disaster. Here's something depressing to think about: if the Keto people are correct, mainstream nutrition science was a key contributor to American obesity crisis and resulted in countless premature deaths and major suffering over the last few decades. Anyway, recently I wanted to look into whether or not eggs are go…

> if the Keto people are correct, mainstream nutrition science was a key contributor to American obesity crisis and resulted in countless premature deaths and major suffering over the last few decades.

I am kind of under the impression that this is generally accepted, at least partially, by pretty much everyone these days, not just Keto people.

As in, the move to remove fats entirely and replace them with carbs is considered today to have been a bad idea, even if no one quite agrees just how bad or just what a better idea is.

Is that not more-or-less consensus today?

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

#157

Post by dragonwriter »

rorykoehler wrote: post #109
jschwartzi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've hiked with people on low-salt diets and they've never failed to get a hyponatremia headache that gets better when they drink some electrolyte(salt). Frankly it doesn't make any sense to me to take an intervention that's good for high blood pressure and unilaterally try to apply it to perfectly healthy people. They did that with fat too and look where we are.

Sodium causes high blood pressure. Electrolyte drinks don't contain sodium but magnesium (and some other salts) if i remember correctly.

Most electrolyte drinks contain both table salt (sodium chloride) and some potassium-based salt; some also contain magnesium salts.

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

#158

Post by rapsey »

j88439h84 wrote: post #151
rapsey wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, there are other fields, like economics and nutrition, where the basic fundamentals of the field are a pile of mud. Practically all social sciences are suspect and really have no business calling themselves sciences.

What are your criteria?

They are all cargo cult sciences. Fields dominated by theories entirely unproven because they are practically unprovable. Those theories remain even after they are often demonstratably wrong. Look up replication crisis.

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

#159

Post by Fej »

nicoburns wrote: post #68
macspoofing wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nutrition Science is a huge mess even though it is a core part of human health. As in, it is a total disaster. Here's something depressing to think about: if the Keto people are correct, mainstream nutrition science was a key contributor to American obesity crisis and resulted in countless premature deaths and major suffering over the last few decades. Anyway, recently I wanted to look into whether or not eggs are go…

> mainstream nutrition science was a key contributor to American obesity crisis This seems unlikely given that mainstream nutrition science is the same in most of the western world, but the obesity levels are far more severe in the US. From what I hear from friends who have travelled to the US (from the UK), standard portion sizes can be over twice as over on your side of the pond. And it can be very difficult to tra…

1. Portion sizes are smaller.

2. Sugar. So much sugar. Specifically, corn syrup. The agricultural lobby has successfully obtained so much in the way of subsidies that corn syrup is actually cheaper than cane sugar. It's in everything. Even bread has sugar of some sort added. You know there's a problem when bread brands place advertisements on the packaging that it "contains no corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup".

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

#160

Post by 3x »

barking wrote: post #43
cies wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, butter is still worse then no butter (and more calories from whole plant foods instead). Margarine may or may not be worse than butter (I think it is worse). It is better to avoid/reduce all refined fats (oils), except maybe for a high DHA omega 3 supplement. If you want to eat for health, look into WFPB, they have a lot of science on their side.

WFPB, whole food plant based diet. No meat, no fish, no dairy. You can eat fruit but you can't juice it. Seems a bit of a misery diet to me.

Eating fresh vegetables and fruits all day is glorious, not miserable. Foods like legumes, seitan, tempeh, tofu, nuts, and mushrooms are all excellent sources of protein and can even be made to taste very similar to meat. Since I stopped eating meat there are a few tastes that I'll miss like bluefin tuna, soft-shell crabs, etc. but overall it's not difficult.
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