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

scientificamerican.com

11–20 of 72 posts

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

#11
post #3

As someone who eats strictly keto (low-carb/high-fat), I actually have to make a concerted effort to get enough salt in my diet due to my naturally retaining less water than non-keto people. This includes making somewhat high-salt food choices wherever reasonable — bacon, pickles, salted butter, cooking with salt in general, etc. — as well as actually adding a salt/electrolyte solution to the water I drink throughout…

I gotta ask. I don't mean to offend. Keto diet sounds like a good way to lose weight. But does it make ones breath smell?

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

#12

So excess of it ceases to cause higher blod pressure or liquid retention, especially in overweight and obese?

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.

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

#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 store salt is just extracted NaCl - which isn't what traditional salt, the salt that's been eaten for centuries, really is. Sea salt is said to have a composition of trace elements which closely resembles the human body. Sea salt has a much lower percentage of NaCl than the processed salt.

I should add that I don't eat a lot of processed food. I cook basic foods and put them in the freezer so I can eat them throughout the week. That is most of my diet. So most of my salt was probably just the occasional junk food I would eat.

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

#14
post #11
post #3

As someone who eats strictly keto (low-carb/high-fat), I actually have to make a concerted effort to get enough salt in my diet due to my naturally retaining less water than non-keto people. This includes making somewhat high-salt food choices wherever reasonable — bacon, pickles, salted butter, cooking with salt in general, etc. — as well as actually adding a salt/electrolyte solution to the water I drink throughout…

I gotta ask. I don't mean to offend. Keto diet sounds like a good way to lose weight. But does it make ones breath smell?

This might be an effect of too much protein in a diet. If you are controlling for carbs, then the solution is to replace protein with more fat.

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

#15
post #11
post #3

As someone who eats strictly keto (low-carb/high-fat), I actually have to make a concerted effort to get enough salt in my diet due to my naturally retaining less water than non-keto people. This includes making somewhat high-salt food choices wherever reasonable — bacon, pickles, salted butter, cooking with salt in general, etc. — as well as actually adding a salt/electrolyte solution to the water I drink throughout…

I gotta ask. I don't mean to offend. Keto diet sounds like a good way to lose weight. But does it make ones breath smell?

I can jump in here. I lost 16kg on a ketogenic diet.

My gut is a lot happier as evidenced by more regular and better (firm, soft, not runny) bowel movements.

There is a definite smell (breath) associated with ketosis. It varies by person but it is often noticeable.

I asked my wife to track it as it's very hard to notice it yourself and she says that my system produces a slightly metallic smell the isn't objectively bad, just different to normal.

I have Muslim friends and during Ramadaan there is a noticeable smell which is subjectively bad from some of them.

A friend who works as a nurse in a very low income area says that she can detect someone who isn't eating normally by the smell - very important to spot if that person is also pregnant.

It's a long way of saying: yes there is a smell, it varies by person.

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

#16
Unrelated to the article directly, but a pretty fascinating story of salt:

By the end of the 2nd century CE, workers had devised a system of leather valves and bamboo pipes which drew up both brine and natural gas, which they burned to boil the brine (the technology they developed for the bamboo piping was eventually applied to household plumbing).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_in_Chinese_history#Ancien...

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

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta ask. I don't mean to offend. Keto diet sounds like a good way to lose weight. But does it make ones breath smell?

This might be an effect of too much protein in a diet. If you are controlling for carbs, then the solution is to replace protein with more fat.

Keto diet makes your body produce ketones for energy, so you get the acetone breath - or something like that

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

#18
In Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk radio show he interviewed The author of "Salt: A World History"[1|2] who said (paraphrased) that statistically, it makes some sense to tell the public to not each too much salt, but on an individual basis you can either eat as much salt as you want or you have a health problem like high blood-pressure.

[1] http://www.startalkradio.net/show/the-salt-of-the-earth-part...

[2] http://www.startalkradio.net/show/the-salt-of-the-earth-part...

(I cannot remember if it was part 1 or part 2, so I linked both parts.)

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

#19
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.

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