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Salt, We Misjudged You

nytimes.com

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Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#141

Post by einhverfr »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #123
arn wrote: post #25

So, I always cringe a little when I read medical conclusions in the mainstream media. And I'll be upfront. I'm probably biased on the side of medicine on this one. I'm a former nephrologist. The one study this person mentions by name (and dismisses) is the DASH-Sodium Study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet#Study_Results "Like the previous study, it was based on a large sample (412 participants) and was a multi…

If you look at the numbers in the Wiki link you provided, the reduction in BP in DASH dieters was small in non-hypertensives and not exactly huge in hypertensives. "Respectively, the DASH or “combination” diet lowered blood pressures by an average of 5.5 and 3.0 mm Hg for systolic and diastolic, compared with the control diet. The minority portion of the study sample and the hypertensive portion both showed the large…

I'd agree. I have had times in my life where I have had to increase my salt consumption to avoid problems. These include everything from altitude sickness to dehydration caused by eating a diet too high in fruit.

However, at the same time I don't think that things are as clear-cut as in the article. One of the serious issues we find in current dietary trends is that we eat more prepared foods which tend to be high in salt, hydrogenated oils, and sugars.

So I personally side both with the idea that we have gone overboard in trying to reduce salt and also the idea that the modern American diet tends towards too much salt. I would also make the somewhat controversial argument that I think that anything we replace salt with will be even worse. The solution is to eat more fresh foods and fewer junk foods and prepared foods, not try to engineer some sort of low sodium equivalents.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#142

Post by einhverfr »

jswinghammer wrote: post #7

As someone who has lost around 40 pounds of fat switching to the high fat paleo diet I'm not at all surprised that the current state of the conventional wisdom on food is wrong in any number of ways. It is funny that we really have no idea what we should be eating naturally at all. Grains were making me sick and I didn't notice for years. It wasn't until I read a book listing side effects of grain consumption that I…

One of the most interesting things is how many sciences inform archaeology, and how few sciences are willing to be informed by archaeology.

High grain diets archaeologically are associated with increased tooth decay and tooth loss rates and lower life-expectancy than high-meat and high-dairy diets. Overly high dairy diets are associated with anemia (probably because cow milk decreases the ability of humans to absorb iron from foods). The Vikings were eating butter smeared on dried fish for breakfast and living significantly longer (and with very low rates of dental caries) than the grain-eating Continental Europeans of the same time. Indeed a Scandinavian living to 5 could expect to live to an older age than a Frenchman living to 20 despite the fact that life expectancy was so heavily slanted by childhood deaths in both cases.

Our conventional wisdom of nutrition is basically plausible hypothesis... if you ignore anything interdisciplenary. I think the archeologists know more about the effects of nutrition on the human body today than anyone else.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#143

Post by einhverfr »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #92
jswinghammer wrote: post #7

As someone who has lost around 40 pounds of fat switching to the high fat paleo diet I'm not at all surprised that the current state of the conventional wisdom on food is wrong in any number of ways. It is funny that we really have no idea what we should be eating naturally at all. Grains were making me sick and I didn't notice for years. It wasn't until I read a book listing side effects of grain consumption that I…

I believe that we all have unique metabolisms and the real "science" is the personal study of how we feel physically correlated with what we have been eating, amount of exercise, lack of tension, etc. I ended up as a vegetarian (with a little fish) because I kept track of how I felt and compared with recently eaten food. I have friends who thrive on high meat diets. We are all different.

Of course statistics dont necessarily translate to the individual. But to further agree with you I would point out a rather nasty (I think) trend in medical science, which is to treat individuals who diverge from the statistical models as defective.

Look up the medical literature for "Cytochrome P-450 defects" for example. What folks are typically talking about here are differences in rates of metabolizing various pharmaceuticals. Some people like are considered defective because we process many medicines very slowly. Personally I think this is great. I take less medicine, and I suspect it may be why constant moderate drinking (alcohol) eventually makes me mildly sick and I have to stop for a while. It's great. Except that it's called a defect by pharmaceutical researchers.... and there's even experimental gene therapy to correct it.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#144

Post by einhverfr »

rubashov wrote: post #11
jswinghammer wrote: post #7

As someone who has lost around 40 pounds of fat switching to the high fat paleo diet I'm not at all surprised that the current state of the conventional wisdom on food is wrong in any number of ways. It is funny that we really have no idea what we should be eating naturally at all. Grains were making me sick and I didn't notice for years. It wasn't until I read a book listing side effects of grain consumption that I…

Well Loren Cordain, godfather of "paleo", remains convinced that salt is bad. He claims the chloride does some bad stuff (I forget) and also the sodium screws up potassium and magnesium levels somehow.

I don't there can be much doubt that improper ratios of sodium in the body can be bad. In particular I'd look at the ratio of sodium to potassium. But the same goes the other way too. Being sodium-deficient is really not fun. I know from experience.

Sodium and potassium have a significant number of important roles in the body and they are balanced against eachother. Too much sodium will mess up the potassium functions and vice versa.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#145

Post by einhverfr »

psykotic wrote: post #78
iand wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fats and proteins are more filling and satisfying per gram than carbs. The pizza example you give is basically wrong. Carbs would be the largest source of calories. For example see http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fast-foods-generic/9307/... which is for a 2500 calorie pepperoni pizza. Almost half the calories come from carbs.

> Fats and proteins are more filling and satisfying per gram than carbs. Again, that statement makes no sense. You don't eat carbs, fats and proteins. You eat foods. Is 100 calories of olive oil as filling as 100 calories of asparagus (about a pound)? If that's too extreme, I'd still gladly put up your 100 calories of olive oil (a few spoonfuls) against my 100 calories of white rice (a small bowl) for satiety and ful…

One problems with carbs though, particularly carbs that break down fast in the body (say, rice or honey) is that they do cause insulin spikes and blood sugar drops, which can often lead to additional consumption. Carbs are unique in this regard though to varying degrees: coconut sugar seems to have very little of this effect while rice is very bad. There's a reason why Chinese food is associated with folks being hungry an hour after eating.

However, I think the real harm comes from combining the carb boom-and-bust blood sugar cycle with high diets where it's easy to eat lots of calories, and when you add a sedentary life style by historical terms, it gets even worse.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the average Irish peasant would have eaten 12 pounds of potatoes every day. That's almost 5000 calories just from the potatoes (and now add a small amount of dairy, veggies, and eggs).

So it's not just one thing. It's the emphasis on carbs, the concentrated energy foods, and the fact that we drive in cars and dont walk that much and certainly don't try to grow our own food in marginal rocky soil.....

Edit: I always wondered why Javanese food is traditionally so sweet without a lot of people being obese. It turns out that the biggest sweatener used is coconut sugar, which has a glycemic index of something like 35. That's a bit higher than whole barley but quite a bit lower than wheat.....

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#147

Post by jiltgeis »

The important thing to remember is that processed salt, which is devoid of all minerals and trace elements is not the same as good-quality natural sea salt, which does contain the trace elements and minerals and is able to be absorbed by the body more easily. Processed salt actually saps the body's mineral reserves and is very hard on the body. In colder harsher seasons for those living in temperate climates, more (good quality) salt is necessary than for people living in the tropical regions for example. Moreover, practically all general restaurant food has entirely too much processed salt content and will actually age you overnight.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#148

Post by muraiki »

Alex3917 wrote: post #85
muraiki wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might also want to think about _why_ some foods taste bland. I feel that I'd never really tasted what a tomato tastes like until I had some at a monastery in Greece. I was surprised to see tomatoes sitting out at dinner, seemingly to be eaten as-is along with the meal. I bit into one and it had a flavor unlike any tomato I've ever had in the USA. I could finally understand that a tomato is a fruit! It was nicely s…

The other part of it is that if your body is used to a high calorie diet with lots of sugar and fat, vegetables are going to taste bad no matter how good they are. And if you're eating healthfully, then even supermarket vegetables will taste reasonably good.

That's true. I remember when I stayed in Japan for a while, initially I found the food underwhelming. It turns out that good 'ol Japanese homecooking isn't designed for the American palate, which is accustomed to lots of sugar, fat, and calories. After a month, though, I loved the food and tasted all sorts of subtle flavors in the vegetables.

Once I came back to America, I found that food here was overwhelming my tastebuds. In particular, I remember trying to drink some Pepsi. It tasted like I was drinking pure sugar (well, I guess that's what it really is). I couldn't even finish it or any other kind of soda. Now I'm able to drink stuff like that again, but that's probably not an improvement. :)

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#149

Post by jiltgeis »

The important thing to remember is that processed salt, which is devoid of all minerals and trace elements is not the same as good-quality natural sea salt, which does contain the trace elements and minerals and is able to be absorbed by the body more easily. Processed salt actually saps the body's mineral reserves and is very hard on the body. In colder harsher seasons for those living in temperate climates, more (good quality) salt is necessary than for people living in the tropical regions for example. Moreover, practically all general restaurant food has entirely too much processed salt content and will actually age you overnight.

Re: Salt, We Misjudged You

#150

Post by Cushman »

whatusername wrote: post #113
fein wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, MSG is supposed to be the "extra" taste area they didn't know about/ teach in school. So although it seems salty, it's actually the savory flavor. MSG is found in just about every single food you eat that has that "savory" flavor.

The "Extra" taste is called Umami: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami Also -- despite what you may have learned in school -- the taste buds aren't mapped to areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions (Search for Taste for links to the relevant sources)

To clarify, since your parent didn't actually misspeak-- There are actually only five main tastes your taste buds can detect. They just aren't organized by location.
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