I thought it was established that the studies blaming sodium for cardiovascular issues were flawed and there was no clear connection, but this paper cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510971... which reaffirms that sodium is bad. Has there been any recent discourse on this conflict?
Edit 2: The paper I linked also claims humans got ~0.5g of salt for most of history (implying humans need very little salt). I'm skeptical of that too - early human civilization was near the ocean, and plenty of animals need much more salt. For instance, non-active horses need 25g of salt daily, which is bodyweight-equivalent to about 5g in humans, not 0.5g. Sheep are 9-11g salt (similar body weight to humans).
First of all, sodium chloride is now deprived of all its trace minerals and nutrients. "Table salt" is pure, translucent and uniformly white, which indicates it has been refined, all the nutrients and minerals removed: they are sold to supplement companies at a premium, because of how valuable they are!
We end up with comparatively worthless Table Salt. (Luke 14:34-35) Therefore, it is rightly vilified, because adding it back during cooking or serving is now pointless.
Also, high sodium levels correlate quite well with ultra-processed food and shelf-stable food. Since it's a preservative, sodium chloride (along with sodium benzoate, MSG, et. al.) is disproportionately added to frozen foods, prepared meals, and in food service, at takeout and restaurants.
Therefore, it's not sodium itself which is the villain here, but sodium content is a proxy and accurate predicter of really awful nutrition, so indeed, it's a good idea to avoid it in the first place.
I have seen a few months ago some study, but I do not remember a link, whose results were that for elevated blood pressure an excess intake of sodium was much less important than an insufficient intake of potassium, correlated to the sodium intake.
EDIT:
I see that one of your links has the same topic with the more recent study that I had seen, i.e. the at least equal importance of the potassium intake.
Yeah, none of them even mention potassium in passing, which seemed odd for me for a paper more or less directly asserting that potassium isn't a (more) significant factor.
I knew chinese food was salty by damn, 11g? Even on days when I consume waaaay to much salt (pigging out on smoked salmon, usually), I don’t generally get over 6g, and I still feel like shit. How is it possible for such a large population to consume so much sodium? Is it genetic, do they have some special adaption for it?
In the part of China I come from, pretty much all common flavor profiles are predominantly salty. This means that people are having salty stir fries, salty stews, salty soups, etc. Sugar&vinegar exists, but a lot less common than salty ones, and even in sugar&vinegar, it's common to add at least a good pinch of salt.
This is different from eating one really salty thing, like smoke salmon, where the saltiness is very pronounced. When salt is evenly distributed in every dish and meal, it's a lot less salient that you've consumed too much of it. It's a common experience when eating out, to not feel like I have had too much salt during the meal, but be very thirsty afterwards. (It's also why I dislike eating out back home, but sometimes it's inevitable)
So you probably do feel like shit, but its constant rather than something that you notice all the sudden after eating way too much salty food, and your body has probably adjusted to the elevated sodium levels over time, so the side effects are diminished (but, according to this paper, still has a significant effect on your heart health).
This is all telling me I should be options trading on biotech companies in China testing blood pressure medication!
Feeling like shit is stretching it; it's just being thirstier than if I'm cooking myself. I'd say if we do feel like a shit, the local culture probably wouldn't have grown so salty.
But health-wise, yeah, it would not be a good idea to eat out often. High blood pressure is a very, very salient health problem, on par with obesity in the public consciousness.
I fucking love salt, and have the blood pressure to go with it. I’ve been more careful about it lately, but I decided to splurge a little tonight at a party, probably in the 3-4 range and I am absolutely whiteknuckling it right now. I almost passed out just thinking about 11g.
American Heart Association says Americans on average have 3500mg sodium which is ~9g salt. I'd guess that's mostly from snacks and side dishes, plus salt used in less-recognizable ways during food production? If you have an upper outlier of 6g I'd say you have a fairly rare diet.
No, I made an error, since I didn't differentiate "salt" from sodium, of course since where I'm from sodium is generally what is labeled for daily intake and not chloride, even though the daily recommended is equimolar[0].
I’ve been prescribed medication for hypertension for years now. Thankfully the outcome has been a consistently well controlled and more-or-less normal range of blood pressure.
My spouse has put in a lot of work to help me get to a point where I’m not actively avoiding added salt or sodium. Where once the DASH diet and 150/90 made me really scared to season a dish, now I don’t shy away from reaching for the salt, or borderline starve myself of sodium.
The point that my spouse made was precisely yours: almost every meal we make is home made (and kudos to my spouse for being our de facto and a fantastic cook).
Worst thing about my trip to the US was how undersalted the food was. Seriously, salt is flavour! I assume it's some combination of the American obsession with salt as a cause of hypertension, and the belief that choice and customization is paramount, so people get to add exactly how much salt they do or do not want with the shakers.
Adding salt to food after it's cooked is, with some caveats, like adding sugar to tea after it's already iced, it ain't the same people.
I don't really know where this rant is going other than my general feeling that the medical establishment is constantly working to make food as unpalateable as possible, and is wrong about it 3/4 of the time anyway. We need to teach people to listen to their own bodies, not make one-size-fits-all pronouncements.
Europeans might not consume healthier diets than Americans, but they move around a lot more, the portions are smaller, and the regulations on food are much tighter, so in the end they end up healthier. But, if you didn't walk much more than the distance between your bed and the toilet, and the toilet to your car, and your parking spot to your desk (or worse for WFH employees, just the trip around the supermarket), you, too, would probably be worse off for consuming the same amount of sodium day to day as the average Chinese person or European.
Speaking as an American: our commercially produced, restaurant, and fast foods all tend to be fairly high in sodium, but it doesn’t always taste salty.
Perhaps, I can only speak to my experiences, but keep in mind that, as an American, your bar is set by precisely the standard you are then attempting to measure the bar by, a bar which you are constantly told is too high. I honestly expected food in America to be on the saltier side from everything I had heard, but I was constantly adding liberal amounts of salt to everything.
I see what you’re saying and you make a good point. The best control I can claim, if we take an experimental perspective, is that most of my meals are home made.
Your point stands nevertheless. Sometimes my spouse will remark on how salty something is if we are eating out of the home, and sometimes I don’t think it’s salty. We both grew up in regions that were really heavy on salty foods, but in different parts of the country. I wonder how that has shaped our perspectives.
I'm always a bit skeptical of these cutting salt will reduce deaths a lot arguments. They seem to go:
Salt raises blood pressure. High blood pressure is associated with heart attacks. Therefore salt bad.
But it could be the bad high blood pressure is caused by clogged arteries, not salt. I'm not sure if studies have ruled that out?
A couple of minor points:
Salt tastes good. We have evolved in salty conditions like by the sea for millions of years. If it was that bad you'd think evolution would have put us off it.
This article is suggesting the Chinese eat too much salt which is unhealthy, they should cut back, but if you look at Chinese cultures outside of China you find:
Hong Kong - #1 life expectancy in the world 85.5 years
Singapore - #4 life expectancy 83.74 years
compare with USA where they faff around with tasteless salt reduced food:
Salt tastes good because the plants do not normally contain sodium, so any terrestrial animal whose food includes plants must find separate sources of salt.
Only some obligate carnivores which eat only other animals do not care about sodium, so they may have little or no sensitivity to salt.
> We have evolved in salty conditions like by the sea for millions of years.
At least the ancestors of the branch of fishes from which the terrestrial vertebrates have evolved, if not the ancestors of all bony fishes or perhaps also the ancestors of all vertebrates, have lived in brackish water, which was much less salty than the ocean water.
The extracellular water in the bodies of the terrestrial vertebrates, including humans, is still a brackish water and it is likely that this is a heritage from the kind of environment to which our ancestors were adapted. This difference in salinity between our internal water and the ocean makes us unable to live by drinking sea water.
In a healthy human, the kidneys will maintain an adequate concentration of sodium in the blood even when you eat too much salt, by excreting it.
It is less clear whether eating too much salt during many years will not stress the kidneys too much, so that they will no longer be able to keep the blood concentration of sodium low enough, which leads to high blood pressure.
Especially for older women who take blood pressure medication for many years, there is an opposite danger, the kidneys may no longer be able to retain enough sodium and potassium in the blood, excreting too much. This may cause hyponatremia or hypokalemia (too low sodium or potassium concentration in the blood), which are extremely dangerous and they may lead to death if not diagnosed correctly in time.
I thought it was established that the studies blaming sodium for cardiovascular issues were flawed and there was no clear connection, but this paper cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510971... which reaffirms that sodium is bad. Has there been any recent discourse on this conflict?
Edit: Just recently, two articles here saying sodium isn't really bad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362798 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38400460
Edit 2: The paper I linked also claims humans got ~0.5g of salt for most of history (implying humans need very little salt). I'm skeptical of that too - early human civilization was near the ocean, and plenty of animals need much more salt. For instance, non-active horses need 25g of salt daily, which is bodyweight-equivalent to about 5g in humans, not 0.5g. Sheep are 9-11g salt (similar body weight to humans).
First of all, sodium chloride is now deprived of all its trace minerals and nutrients. "Table salt" is pure, translucent and uniformly white, which indicates it has been refined, all the nutrients and minerals removed: they are sold to supplement companies at a premium, because of how valuable they are!
We end up with comparatively worthless Table Salt. (Luke 14:34-35) Therefore, it is rightly vilified, because adding it back during cooking or serving is now pointless.
Also, high sodium levels correlate quite well with ultra-processed food and shelf-stable food. Since it's a preservative, sodium chloride (along with sodium benzoate, MSG, et. al.) is disproportionately added to frozen foods, prepared meals, and in food service, at takeout and restaurants.
Therefore, it's not sodium itself which is the villain here, but sodium content is a proxy and accurate predicter of really awful nutrition, so indeed, it's a good idea to avoid it in the first place.
I have seen a few months ago some study, but I do not remember a link, whose results were that for elevated blood pressure an excess intake of sodium was much less important than an insufficient intake of potassium, correlated to the sodium intake.
EDIT: I see that one of your links has the same topic with the more recent study that I had seen, i.e. the at least equal importance of the potassium intake.
Yeah, none of them even mention potassium in passing, which seemed odd for me for a paper more or less directly asserting that potassium isn't a (more) significant factor.
I knew chinese food was salty by damn, 11g? Even on days when I consume waaaay to much salt (pigging out on smoked salmon, usually), I don’t generally get over 6g, and I still feel like shit. How is it possible for such a large population to consume so much sodium? Is it genetic, do they have some special adaption for it?
In the part of China I come from, pretty much all common flavor profiles are predominantly salty. This means that people are having salty stir fries, salty stews, salty soups, etc. Sugar&vinegar exists, but a lot less common than salty ones, and even in sugar&vinegar, it's common to add at least a good pinch of salt.
This is different from eating one really salty thing, like smoke salmon, where the saltiness is very pronounced. When salt is evenly distributed in every dish and meal, it's a lot less salient that you've consumed too much of it. It's a common experience when eating out, to not feel like I have had too much salt during the meal, but be very thirsty afterwards. (It's also why I dislike eating out back home, but sometimes it's inevitable)
So you probably do feel like shit, but its constant rather than something that you notice all the sudden after eating way too much salty food, and your body has probably adjusted to the elevated sodium levels over time, so the side effects are diminished (but, according to this paper, still has a significant effect on your heart health).
This is all telling me I should be options trading on biotech companies in China testing blood pressure medication!
Feeling like shit is stretching it; it's just being thirstier than if I'm cooking myself. I'd say if we do feel like a shit, the local culture probably wouldn't have grown so salty.
But health-wise, yeah, it would not be a good idea to eat out often. High blood pressure is a very, very salient health problem, on par with obesity in the public consciousness.
I fucking love salt, and have the blood pressure to go with it. I’ve been more careful about it lately, but I decided to splurge a little tonight at a party, probably in the 3-4 range and I am absolutely whiteknuckling it right now. I almost passed out just thinking about 11g.
My random Internet friend, have you spoken with a doctor about this?
American Heart Association says Americans on average have 3500mg sodium which is ~9g salt. I'd guess that's mostly from snacks and side dishes, plus salt used in less-recognizable ways during food production? If you have an upper outlier of 6g I'd say you have a fairly rare diet.
No, I made an error, since I didn't differentiate "salt" from sodium, of course since where I'm from sodium is generally what is labeled for daily intake and not chloride, even though the daily recommended is equimolar[0].
[0]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7009052/
When you cook your own food, it is pretty normal to eat only 5 to 6 g of salt per day.
Only when you buy food made industrially it becomes very unlikely to reach a so low daily intake of salt.
I’ve been prescribed medication for hypertension for years now. Thankfully the outcome has been a consistently well controlled and more-or-less normal range of blood pressure.
My spouse has put in a lot of work to help me get to a point where I’m not actively avoiding added salt or sodium. Where once the DASH diet and 150/90 made me really scared to season a dish, now I don’t shy away from reaching for the salt, or borderline starve myself of sodium.
The point that my spouse made was precisely yours: almost every meal we make is home made (and kudos to my spouse for being our de facto and a fantastic cook).
I cannot imagine 10+ grams of salt a day.
Worst thing about my trip to the US was how undersalted the food was. Seriously, salt is flavour! I assume it's some combination of the American obsession with salt as a cause of hypertension, and the belief that choice and customization is paramount, so people get to add exactly how much salt they do or do not want with the shakers.
Adding salt to food after it's cooked is, with some caveats, like adding sugar to tea after it's already iced, it ain't the same people.
I don't really know where this rant is going other than my general feeling that the medical establishment is constantly working to make food as unpalateable as possible, and is wrong about it 3/4 of the time anyway. We need to teach people to listen to their own bodies, not make one-size-fits-all pronouncements.
Europeans might not consume healthier diets than Americans, but they move around a lot more, the portions are smaller, and the regulations on food are much tighter, so in the end they end up healthier. But, if you didn't walk much more than the distance between your bed and the toilet, and the toilet to your car, and your parking spot to your desk (or worse for WFH employees, just the trip around the supermarket), you, too, would probably be worse off for consuming the same amount of sodium day to day as the average Chinese person or European.
Speaking as an American: our commercially produced, restaurant, and fast foods all tend to be fairly high in sodium, but it doesn’t always taste salty.
Perhaps, I can only speak to my experiences, but keep in mind that, as an American, your bar is set by precisely the standard you are then attempting to measure the bar by, a bar which you are constantly told is too high. I honestly expected food in America to be on the saltier side from everything I had heard, but I was constantly adding liberal amounts of salt to everything.
I see what you’re saying and you make a good point. The best control I can claim, if we take an experimental perspective, is that most of my meals are home made.
Your point stands nevertheless. Sometimes my spouse will remark on how salty something is if we are eating out of the home, and sometimes I don’t think it’s salty. We both grew up in regions that were really heavy on salty foods, but in different parts of the country. I wonder how that has shaped our perspectives.
You can't remove salt from food after you add it. You also can't argue with taste.
You can't cook the salt into food after you serve it either.
I'm always a bit skeptical of these cutting salt will reduce deaths a lot arguments. They seem to go:
Salt raises blood pressure. High blood pressure is associated with heart attacks. Therefore salt bad.
But it could be the bad high blood pressure is caused by clogged arteries, not salt. I'm not sure if studies have ruled that out?
A couple of minor points:
Salt tastes good. We have evolved in salty conditions like by the sea for millions of years. If it was that bad you'd think evolution would have put us off it.
This article is suggesting the Chinese eat too much salt which is unhealthy, they should cut back, but if you look at Chinese cultures outside of China you find:
Hong Kong - #1 life expectancy in the world 85.5 years
Singapore - #4 life expectancy 83.74 years
compare with USA where they faff around with tasteless salt reduced food:
USA - #55 life expectancy 79.3 years
Figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
I know there are other factors like obesity in the US and China had various communist horrors, but it's not really selling me on the no salt thing.
> Salt tastes good.
Salt tastes good because the plants do not normally contain sodium, so any terrestrial animal whose food includes plants must find separate sources of salt.
Only some obligate carnivores which eat only other animals do not care about sodium, so they may have little or no sensitivity to salt.
> We have evolved in salty conditions like by the sea for millions of years.
At least the ancestors of the branch of fishes from which the terrestrial vertebrates have evolved, if not the ancestors of all bony fishes or perhaps also the ancestors of all vertebrates, have lived in brackish water, which was much less salty than the ocean water.
The extracellular water in the bodies of the terrestrial vertebrates, including humans, is still a brackish water and it is likely that this is a heritage from the kind of environment to which our ancestors were adapted. This difference in salinity between our internal water and the ocean makes us unable to live by drinking sea water.
In a healthy human, the kidneys will maintain an adequate concentration of sodium in the blood even when you eat too much salt, by excreting it.
It is less clear whether eating too much salt during many years will not stress the kidneys too much, so that they will no longer be able to keep the blood concentration of sodium low enough, which leads to high blood pressure.
Especially for older women who take blood pressure medication for many years, there is an opposite danger, the kidneys may no longer be able to retain enough sodium and potassium in the blood, excreting too much. This may cause hyponatremia or hypokalemia (too low sodium or potassium concentration in the blood), which are extremely dangerous and they may lead to death if not diagnosed correctly in time.