The CAUSE of the Obesity Epidemic Is SALT (The Weightloss Secret)

Review these testimonials...
www.ricedietprogram.com...

Most of Asia has rice as their staple. Rice is high in carbs yet many of them are very thin. If you've ever heard about the Rice Diet and read some of the success stories, you'd think the answer is Rice. If you read further you will see that the rice diet encourages the eating of rice, fruits, vegetables, and other foods that are very low in sodium. The answer is in fact low sodium! Some people on the rice diet shed 70 lbs in 3 months according to testimonials.

It's well known that high salt leads to water retention, high blood pressure, stress, fatigue/feeling tired, and stimulates appetite. YES, it stimulates the appetite, it also stimulates you thirst causing you to drink more. High amounts of sodium are purposely packed into foods to get you to eat and buy more of their products!

While many people are counting carbs, watching fat and counting calories, the biggest culprit is being missed. The one that makes you gain water weight, stimulates appetite, makes you tired so you eat more, causes you high blood pressure which also makes you stressed out! The main cause of the obesity epidemic and the reason why all the people counting calories and watching their fat intake are still obese after all these years is SALT!

The secret is to reduce your sodium intake altogether! Science shows that potassium and sodium balance one another out. In nature all fruits and vegetables are high in potassium and very low in sodium! Therefore even nature is trying to flush the sodium out of us with it's high potassium low sodium foods! We are interupting the balance of nature when our diets are high sodium low potassium!

Please research this, the cause of the obesity epidemic and one of the biggest conspiracies of all is SALT. Reduce your salt intake and you will start shedding the pounds off! If you need proof, look towards ASIA! Look towards those who have RICE as their main staple food. Rice has 0 sodium when steamed!

[edit on 2-11-2009 by Colopatiron]

[edit on 2-11-2009 by Colopatiron]

Here is a great article on salt and obesity..
www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk...

Obesity and the Salt Connection
What follows is a slightly modified version of an article I wrote for the monthly glossy magazine of Mensa, the high IQ society, of which I am a member. It was published in the December 2004 issue. Four months later, the April 2005 issue contained a letter from Joyce Barnard, who has given permission for her name to be used here. She wrote that by following the advice I had given her a few years earlier - i.e. that to lower her high blood pressure and lose weight she simply needed to eat less sodium - she had lost 5 stones in weight (70 pounds) in a year! - All she did was stop sprinkling salt onto her meals and use LoSalt instead of ordinary salt when cooking.

Many years ago I gained a great deal of weight because of taking HRT prescribed by my GPs, mainly on the advice of an endocrinologist. - I did not realise at the time that the weight gain was because of the medication. I became desperately ill and exhausted and had very high blood pressure for which I took Atenolol, a beta-blocker. I was so fat I could barely walk. Yet I was not overeating. My feet, hands and breasts were exquisitely painful and very red and swollen. I was unable to use my hands for many tasks. I needed a larger size in shoes. My face and neck became beetroot red and very swollen. I developed acne and eczema. I suffered from breathlessness.

Having never sprinkled salt on my food in my life, and never used it in cooking, in 1997 I became aware that there was a lot of salt in bread and cheese and breakfast cereals. Because of the connection between hypertension and salt intake I altered my eating to reduce, and eventually to exclude, all avoidable sodium. This lowered my blood pressure and I no longer needed to take Atenolol.

More spectacularly, and very unexpectedly to me, eating less salt reduced my weight by 51 pounds! - This was nothing to do with calories, fat or sugar. - The weight I lost was clearly water, which I worked out was held in my body by the salt - held in my veins, which had become massively distended and painful since I had embarked on the HRT.

I worked out that it was the oestrogen that had caused the sodium and water retention and this was confirmed when I looked in the British National Formulary for the side-effects of oestrogen. I then realised that oestrogen was a steroid, though it is not normally thought of in that category, and that the sodium and water retention came about because certain steroids and certain other prescribed drugs relax/weaken the walls of the blood vessels so that they take in excess salt and the water which accompanies it. I realised that I was a 'steroid victim'.

For many years I have been providing a free telephone helpline for people in pain in my area and for the last five years have been advising all callers to reduce their salt intake, particularly when they were obese. Their weight loss, too, has been dramatic and swift. One Mensa member whom I helped lost about a stone in a month just by eating less salt. Her dog, too, lost weight when she stopped salting his food!

I firmly believe that the massive rise in the incidence of obesity, especially child obesity, is due to the prevalence of salt in modern diets, mainly from manufactured foods, and that calorie counting and advice about reducing fat and sugar intake and increasing exercise are counter-productive.

But salt causes obesity only in vulnerable people, i.e. People whose veins are weak because of immaturity (babies, children), People whose veins are weak because of steroids or HRT or amitriptyline or certain other prescribed drugs, too readily prescribed, often in very high dose, People whose natural oestrogen levels are higher than normal (e.g. pregnant women). People whose blood vessel walls have been weakened by 'slimming' - i.e. eating insufficient food.

continued..

Inactivity does not cause obesity. Obesity causes inactivity.

In 2001 I wrote to MPs, to medical people, to journalists, to nutritionists and others, explaining that salt sensitivity is what causes obesity, and urging that the facts be made known, particularly to steroid victims. The powerful and influential people to whom I wrote have taken no action to give publicity to the life-saving message. The public is not being told the truth about weight gain and weight loss. The best, the healthiest, the safest way to lose weight is to concentrate on eating less salt (and more potassium).

An Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Oxford*, wrote back to me in August 2001 that I was right about steroids causing weight gain because of salt and water retention and that weight can be lost by eating less salt or by taking diuretics. Sadly he seems to be the only medic who knows this! - A book on salt, written by experts on hypertension and brought out in a blaze of publicity a few years ago makes no mention of steroid victims and specifically states, among other errors, that HRT does not cause a salt problem.

A person who gains weight has a higher calorie requirement. There are two reasons for this. Having to carry a greater mass around and service a more massive body uses more calories. And having a bigger surface area means greater heat loss, since heat lost is proportional to surface area. - A greater calorie requirement results in greater appetite/hunger, so, really, overweight people need to eat more than people of normal weight. If the overweight eat insufficient calories (ie if they 'diet') they may lose weight, but it is at the cost of being hungry. There has never been the slightest evidence that the practice of fewer calories in and more calories out by way of exercise reduces obesity! - It is often confidently stated that fat will be lost by doing this. - Sadly, what is more often lost is lean tissue, usually an irreversible adverse effect.

The result of the misunderstanding of the cause of obesity is the well-known fact that over 95% of dieters actually gain weight in the long term! - They cannot be expected to go hungry all the time. - Nor would staying hungry all the time benefit them. - With insufficient calories for the body's needs, the body feeds on itself. - The skin becomes thinner; the bones become less dense; there is some hair loss, etc.

Contrast this with the right way to lose weight - by eating less sodium. - Eating less sodium releases some of the excess water held in the blood stream. This lowers the blood pressure and, significantly, lowers the weight. - Weighing less results in a lower calorie requirement so very gradually less food is eaten and this becomes a virtuous circle because less food eaten results in lower sodium intake.

In societies in which no salt is eaten (what some might describe as undeveloped or uncivilised societies) there is no obesity and no hypertension.

The cavemen and women who were our ancestors lived for millennia without added salt. Our bodies evolved on a low sodium and high potassium intake. The modern diet has reversed this to high sodium and low potassium. The intake of salt has massively increased in recent years - as has the incidence of obesity.

I submit that the universal 'slimming' advice - to eat fewer calories/less fat/sugar - is a major cause of obesity. - All that is necessary to lose weight is to eat less salt/sodium. This is a drug-free, cost-free course of action. There are no hunger pangs and no adverse side-effects. It requires no visits to the doctor or to the gym and it WILL work.

Lose weight by eating less salt!-Go on!-Try it! My website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk provides more details and advice.

Margaret Wilde
Anyone is welcome to copy this article in whole or in part.

Salt Intake Is Strongly Associated With Obesity
www.sciencedaily.com...

Actually, there is no secret to weight loss. Most obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong foods, and from inactivity. The only "secret" to weight loss is:

1. Eat less (take in fewer calories)
2. Eat healthier foods (more balanced nutrition)
3. Get adequate exercise daily.

The problem with this list is that it is not something you just do until you reach your target weight. It must be a lifestyle change that you continue indefinitely. If you try to go on a diet and rapidly get down to a target weight, you reset your body's metabolism to burn slower. That means when you eventually start eating again, your body will gain weight even faster than before.

Salt intake will cause you to retain water, which will increase your weight, but not your fat. If you eat less salt, you will lose the retained water and have a quick weight loss. However, any fat you have will remain, and will need to be burned off. However, we need salt to live, so you can't eliminate it completely.

Throughout millions of years of evolutions, our bodies have developed life-saving instincts, among which is a preference for salty, sweet, and fat foods. In nature for most of our history there has been a shortage of such foods. Salt is often difficult to find, away from the oceans. We need sugars, but they aren't all that plentiful. And fat foods are excellent sources of energy, which is important.

Now we are surrounded by salt, sugar, and endless amonunts of fats. The evolutionary instincts haven't yet caught up with these changes. Only in the past 100 years or so have we had such abundant access to these desired foods. We still crave them, even though we now eat enough of them to damage our health. The instinct that drives us to seek these foods, which once helped us to survive, is killing us. We need to overcome that natural craving, or we are likely to overeat and suffer the consequences.

Reducing salt will be a major help, but it's not the whole answer.

I lost 60 pounds over a 2 1/2 month time with very little exercise (walk acouple miles a week). My diet consisted of raw fruits, nuts and vegetables. I typically ate 2-4k calories a day.

The problem probably does have something to do with salt but its not really the culprit, what the salt does is make processed food extremely addictive

There could be two reasons for obese Americans:

1. The Aliens have a big cookbook and they are fattening us up for 2012

2. The earlier posters are right about salt... except they forgot a couple of other issues. I now live in Moldova.. dirt poor ex-soviet union country between Romania and Ukraine. Very few obese... why? NO PRESERVATIVES allowed in the foods. NO HIGH FRUCTOSE Corn syrup. Lots of fruits and veggies. I lost weight when I moved here and did not reduce my food consumption. I can actually go to the market and buy processed chicken and pork and what do you know.. no salt, no nitrates, no preservatives of any kind. I can actually eat a piece of lunch meat without choking on salt. The soft drinks, even Coke and Pepsi are sweetened... with real SUGAR.

When I say NO PRESERVATIVES... I mean it.. NONE. So I can buy bread, cookies, crackers, juices, meat..etc.. all natural. You don't get the "shelf life" like twinkies have... but you don't get poisoned with all kinds of chemicals either.

Before coming here I viewed the Natural Food freaks as nutcases... I am a total convert. I figure a good part of the health problems people in the West have is due to food additives.

This is an interesting tidbit. I grew up on a low sodium diet, and I and everyone else in my family is thin. When I say "low sodium", I essentially mean that salt is not added to anything. There is enough sodium in a can of anything...tomatoes, ketchup, anything to more than cover not adding it.
(Check the label of ketchup to see how much sodium is in one serving, and mustard). It's ludicrous. You can buy these low-sodium products.

I have always thought it is not our food that makes people fat. It's what we DO to our food. I may comment on that a little more later. But the obesity equation also includes fats. Must not rule that out. Fats and sodium are the nemesis. And my weakness. Sugar.

Since this has been brought up there are two things I would like to suggest. One, start noticing when you buy foods how much sodium it contains. It will send you reeling. Prepared lunch meats (OMG); a can of Campbell's soup (which they market as healthy?...please). There is so much salt in that crap it approaches toxicity. Just look at the label. There is over 2,000 mgs. of sodium in one small can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. (Remember they count it by serving size...not the can, so you have to double or triple the amount of the serving size depending on what it is). Then they market it as healthy? It's a heart attack looking for a place to happen.

And it is soo harsh on the system. The kidney's. Notice when someone develops kidney problems the salt is the first thing the physician eliminates from the diet.

The second thing is this. If you are really a salt junkie, don't think this will be a struggle for the rest of your life. It's not. One week. One week off sodium and you don't want it anymore. It makes your food taste, hm, I will say "harsh". The actual flavor of what you are eating comes through, and it's actually better. ONE WEEK. That's all it takes. It's not like cigarettes or something you crave for the rest of your life.

Everyone in my family has a couple of things that require salt for us. For example, for me, it's eggs, or raw tomatoes. But since I use it on so little, I can take the hit.

But if you want to stop using it just to lose weight, you have to keep in mind that the way sugar is processed causes it to be toxic (almost) and too much animal fat is lethal. Not just fattening.

Also, when I say "I'm thin"... and everybody in my family is thin, I really think that too, has much to do with the way we are made. Just wired to be thin. But if I ever get "too thin" (which happens) I know how to gain a lot of weight very quickly........Ice Cream. Whoa. The weight comes on fast. And it really doesn't have that much sodium in it. (Or does it? I've never really checked). It's fats and sugars.

Sorry if some of this is off topic. I was once asked to speak at a local ladies group who were trying to lose weight. My part was called "Confessions of a skinny woman", and these comments were some of the things I included in my little talk.

reply to post by chiron613


did you read teh op? are you serious with a post like that? how can you coome into a thread so friggin clueless as you are and have the attitude that you're going to tell the op and us how to lose weight by traditional methods when the whole f8#*$3 point of the thread is to tell us something different.

reply to post by Moodle


Chiron613 was agreeing with the OP, but also pointing out that salt is not the only cause. Losing weight is one thing, but being thin does not always mean healthy. Exercise and a healthy diet (including lowering your salt intake) should be hand in hand.

Originally posted by chiron613
Actually, there is no secret to weight loss. Most obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong foods, and from inactivity. The only "secret" to weight loss is:

1. Eat less (take in fewer calories)
2. Eat healthier foods (more balanced nutrition)
3. Get adequate exercise daily.

This is an theory that has been proven wrong over and over again. You have the people that eat a lot and never gain weight. You have the people who eat unhealthy foods all the time and never gain weight. You have the people who do not exercise at all and never gain weight. You have the people who don't do any of the above and never gain weight. Always attributed to their metabolism/body as if they got some alien foreign body that is outside the human makeup!

Then you have the overweight people who eat less, eat healthier foods and exercise and they still struggle with their weight for years. They try very hard to stick to those above rules and don't see much progress. They cheat off and on but it doesn't begin to compare to those who cheat every day and don't gain weight.

What you are forgetting is FOOD GIVES YOU ENERGY. Yes that is correct. So if you eat less you tend to have less energy. How are you going to exercise if you can barely stay awake because of your calorie restrictions?

Not to mention, have you SEEN some of the calorie requirements out there for someone to maintain their body weight? 2,000 a day, 3,000 a day, 4,000 a day!
www.exrx.net...

These things have been proven wrong over and over again as well. Ask any obese person who is trying to lose weight if they are eating 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day? Most are eating around 1500. By that measure they should be losing weight but many hit stalls in weight loss! How is that possible when the calorie/eat less people are calculating that they need 3k-4k just to maintain their obesity weight! They'd have an instant calorie deficit without even exercising of 1,000 calories or more a day. That's an instant loss of 2 pounds a week just for cutting calories but it never happens like that does it!

Time to wake up and start thinking outside the box. Look at real life examples. Look towards ASIA and at what they are eating to stay so thin.

Originally posted by Rawhemp
I lost 60 pounds over a 2 1/2 month time with very little exercise (walk acouple miles a week). My diet consisted of raw fruits, nuts and vegetables. I typically ate 2-4k calories a day.

The problem probably does have something to do with salt but its not really the culprit, what the salt does is make processed food extremely addictive

Thanks Rawhemp for the reply. Here is the irony in your post though, you said salt probably has something to do with it but really is not the culprit.

However you lost 60 pounds in 2 1/2 months buy dramatically cutting salt! RAW FRUITS, NUTS, VEGETABLES. You got the potassium sodium balance back in your body!

60 lbs in 2 1/2 months is a transformation, there are a lot of people out there who would love to have results like that who are doing low calorie, low carb, low fat, starvation diets! Here you are eating 2-4k in calories on a low sodium diet and you lose 60 lbs in 2 1/2 months with very little exercise? HOW STRANGE IS THAT. It's like you are proving the point and don't even realize it.

Originally posted by expat2368
There could be two reasons for obese Americans:

1. The Aliens have a big cookbook and they are fattening us up for 2012

2. The earlier posters are right about salt... except they forgot a couple of other issues. I now live in Moldova.. dirt poor ex-soviet union country between Romania and Ukraine. Very few obese... why? NO PRESERVATIVES allowed in the foods. NO HIGH FRUCTOSE Corn syrup. Lots of fruits and veggies. I lost weight when I moved here and did not reduce my food consumption. I can actually go to the market and buy processed chicken and pork and what do you know.. no salt, no nitrates, no preservatives of any kind. I can actually eat a piece of lunch meat without choking on salt. The soft drinks, even Coke and Pepsi are sweetened... with real SUGAR.

When I say NO PRESERVATIVES... I mean it.. NONE. So I can buy bread, cookies, crackers, juices, meat..etc.. all natural. You don't get the "shelf life" like twinkies have... but you don't get poisoned with all kinds of chemicals either.

Before coming here I viewed the Natural Food freaks as nutcases... I am a total convert. I figure a good part of the health problems people in the West have is due to food additives.

That is my point, you travel to many parts of the world and they eat a lot of the same foods. I cannot count how many times I heard someone say I went to another country, ate a lot of the same foods but lost a lot of weight! Here it is again! I never quite understood quite why until recently and that reason is SALT. Certain countries are bigger on SALT than others in all their foods and packaging.

Originally posted by ladyinwaiting

That is the thing, all one has to do is look at all the problems SALT causes in our body and see how these problems are linked to obesity.

High blood pressure = stress = emotional embalance = eating for comfort
Fatigue/feeling tired = eating in hopes of not feeling fatigued
Thirst/dehydrated = drinking more fluids, possibly more sodas

Why is it that when you go out to eat a big meal, you end up feeling tired afterwards? Could it be because you just put a lot of salt in your body? Fruit doesn't make you tired!

I think blood flow is one of the most critical factors however, your blood flow correlates to your energy levels. I've been trying to find ways to increase my overall blood flow (garlic, spicy foods, water, breathing exercises) and never thought to question SALT. Well here it is, the biggest attack on human blood flow. It's been known for years that a high salt diet correlates to a higher risk of stroke! Many people have said obese people have a higher risk of heart disease and stroke as well! Connect the dots and you'll see SALT causes OBESITY.

[edit on 2-11-2009 by Colopatiron]

Originally posted by Moodle

Thanks Moodle, a salt lobbyist says the same thing as the doubters!
www.scienceblog.com...

Is the "silly season" of US elections spilling over into anti-salt advocacy? Drs. Heikki Karppanen and Eero Mervaala assert that their study "refutes the frequently repeated claims that a comprehensive salt reduction would not produce any overall health benefits, or would even increase diseases and shorten the life span." It does no such thing.

As president of the Salt Institute, I should point out that we have made the argument frequently (and, apparently, someone is listening!) that observational studies of health outcomes fail to identify population health benefits at levels common in the North American diet -- and advocating a controlled trial of reduced salt diets to determine whether they decrease heart attacks and cardiovascular mortality.

That is the right question, but this claim that low-salt diets "would be a powerful means against obesity" is just over the top. Of course, if we made foods so unpalatable as to stop people from eating as much (as has been done with less-than-happy results in geriatric institutions) we might be able to link salt and body mass, but to assert "The increased intake of salt, through induction of thirst with increased intake of high-energy beverages has obviously remarkably contributed to the increase of obesity in the United States" with no evidence adduced to support the allegation is irresponsible.

The authors specifically cited Salt Institute statistics of U.S. salt sales saying that salt intake had increased "more than 50%" over a recent 15 year period. That's wrong. In response, I wrote Dr. Karppanen:

"Your concern with increased salt intakes is obviously misplaced. While salt intakes in the U.S. have increased in the past 15 years, they track population increases. The U.S. population is 300 million today. We've added 50 million in population in those years. I know population growth is something a bit foreign to your part of the world, but we've experienced a lot of immigration and natural population growth. Even so, our latest figures show food salt sales growth up 41%, not "over 50%" and while greater than the population growth, this does not account for US food salt which is exported in US processed foods, salt used in food processing and wastage. The better metric, as I'm sure you agree, is 24-hour urines and those in study after study show that baseline salt intakes per capita are unchanging generation after generation.

"Of course, correlation is not causation, but to correlate salt intake with the rise in obesity ignores evidence that those on higher salt diets are actually leaner than other Americans. Just as obviously, the longest-lived national population in the world, the Japanese, have much higher salt intakes than Americans. Your "obvious" correlation of salt intake and thirst and obesity makes interesting headlines, but sorry science."

The Finns claim salt reduction is responsible for increasing the life span of their compatriots by 7-8 years over the past one-third century. Let's keep in mind, Romans lived to an average age of 28. The Yanomamo people of the Brazilian jungles who are touted as low-salt-consuming models for our diet live only into their 30s. A century ago, Americans lived only 48 years on average while a century later we live 77 years on average. If Finland's medical and nutrition improvements parallel Americans, 7-8 years additional longevity over the past 30 years is just average, nothing to crow about -- nor to try to assign causation when none can be adduced from ecologic data.

Unfortunately, while preposterous charges amongst American politicians will likely abate after November 7th, there is no apparent reprieve from the anti-salt crowd.

Dick Hanneman
President
Salt Institute

Salt is not the devil your making it out to be. Being healthy is about having a balanced lifestyle.

Sodium is a necessary mineral for muscle growth. More sodium enhances carbohydrate storage and amino acid absorption and improves your muscle's responsiveness to insulin

Basically if your body is low on sodium you have a harder to making muscle. Muscle causes your body to burn fat at a higher rate along with many other positive benefits.

Saying salt is the problem is like people blaming carbs ( ohh you did that also..)

What he acknowledges is the rapid increase in the consumption of SALT in America, up 41%. He also states that the Japanese eat much more salt than Americans and look how much healthier they are! LIES.

Do your research and you'll see that RICE has 0 sodium in it. It's their staple. The problem with potatoes in America is they are rarely eaten without salt. Even bread has salt. So if a person moves to a staple that has little to no sodium in it, they are essentially on a low sodium diet. When you start off with a food that has 0 sodium in it you are already ahead of all the other foods that come with sodium before you add salt to it!

This will be the future of weightloss as more and more people unlock this secret!

Originally posted by whoshotJR
Salt is not the devil your making it out to be. Being healthy is about having a balanced lifestyle.

Sodium is a necessary mineral for muscle growth. More sodium enhances carbohydrate storage and amino acid absorption and improves your muscle's responsiveness to insulin

Basically if your body is low on sodium you have a harder to making muscle. Muscle causes your body to burn fat at a higher rate along with many other positive benefits.

Saying salt is the problem is like people blaming carbs ( ohh you did that also..)

I didn't blame carbs, I said people are misled when they blame carbs because look towards ASIA and you will see that many eat RICE every day and it is loaded with carbs. They also eat a lot of fruit that low carbers are told to eat in moderation or stay away from!

The key is to watch your salt intake! We are meant to get more potassium than salt, look towards nature. Everything that you attribute to salt and muscles, can also be attributed to potassium at a much higher percentage! What do they say to do after a work out? Eat a banana to get the potassium to help fight against muscle soreness from the sodium! YES THE SODIUM (SALT).

Imagine what you're muscles would be like if SALT wasn't interfering with soreness. Look towards the animal kingdom, the strength of many of these animals that have the proper potassium sodium balance in nature! The chimp that does not eat meat but lives on fruits and vegetables and how strong it is. Often said strong enough to rip your fingers off. It doesn't need protein supplements or a high protein diet and it doesn't need excess salt!

What about all the SODIUM that gets used in various forms like monosodium glutamate (MSG). This hidden SODIUM that is in food because it's been chemically altered. The hidden SODIUM used to preserve foods that isn't even on labels. The chemicals that use SODIUM as it's base. Just something to consider or research.

[edit on 2-11-2009 by Colopatiron]

OH yes, lets all join the rice diet! For a mere $5900 you to can be on your way to health through bland foods