Salt, We Misjudged You!

Salt is the most nastiest thing next to mustard, I don't buy it I don't use it. I know it's in my food so I get it with diet I don't use it period, McDonalds fries make me gag so much salt , so I order no salt fries,

Every time I attempt to eat salt alone or with something Makes me sick to my stomach, told my wife must be allergic to salt lol I call it poison

All salts are not the same. If you are used to normal table salt, next time try preparing your food using sea salt. It has many different salts and minerals in it.

Even better, if you can afford the luxury, get Fleur de sel, it is the top layer of the salt containing even more "impurities" (minerals and salts). It has a stronger and wider taste than normal sea salt.

Mineral Quantity
Sodium Chloride 94.3 - 97.6%
Calcium 0.19 - 0.20%
Magnesium 0.42 - 0.79%
Potassium 0.22 - 0.67%
Iron 8.0 - 11.1 mg/kg
Iodine 0.5 -

Sodium restriction is today the most widely publicized non-medication recommendation for heart disease and stroke prevention. Unfortunately, this advice has proven ineffective.

-Dr. John McDougall

It's hard to find doctors who's thinking falls outside of that of the medical establishment. Yet, Dr. McDougall has some great information on sodium as "The Scapegoat for the Western Diet."

It seems no matter what I do there is always something out there that can kill me: BPA in canned foods, mercury in fish, lead, etc...I just try to eat as healthy as I can, stay in shape with daily exercise, drink filtered water and eat my vegetables, mostly steamed. If I want to salt my food I will and I will enjoy eating it when I do. Life is too short to be worrying over every single little thing we do. Thanks for listening.

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


I guess I'm very skeptical of our gov't doing anything today that doesn't benefit a special interest group. Especially, when so many special interest groups stand to benefit from this reversal: Salt industry, processing plants, processed food manufactures ,etc.

While on the other hand, I can't see which industry would have benefited from reducing the salt intake unless a new patented salt alternative was developed which I don't believe to be the case.

Like I said I'm skeptical of the new finding and would not go on a salt binge without regular checkups with your doctor.

I would be curious to see who sponsored those studies and why?

The word “salary” was derived from the word “salt.” Salt was highly valued and its production was legally restricted in ancient times, so it was historically used as a method of trade and currency. The word “salad” also originated from “salt,” and began with the early Romans salting their leafy greens and vegetables. Undeniably, the history of salt is both broad ranging and unique, leaving its indelible mark in cultures across the globe.

www.saltworks.us...

I have several questions...

I'm interested to know, if salt is such a necessary part of our diet, what did our early ancestors do? Carry a small bag of salt around with them and sprinkle it on their meat/fish and veg? Did they consume any salt at all? Were they aware of it's importance? Did they suffer from health problems because they didn't get enough of it?

I'm still of the opinion that too much salt is bad for you, I don't really care what one doctor says.

Yes our ancestors would have valued salt and it would of been of great importance to them, but they didn't live in modern times where EVERYTHING is salted.

Thus, I think we consume too much salt nowadays. I stopped salting all my foods months ago after reading the labels of some foods and seeing the incredibly high salt content in it.

But that's just my choice, feel free to continue eating lots of salt. Just report back 50 years from now and tell us of any health problems.

Of course salt was so valuable hundreds of years ago. It was the ONLY known way to preserve meat.

Remember, people had to store massive amounts of food back then, to survive winters for example, not mention large quantities of salted food taken onto ships.

We came from salt water.

And so concludes the salt conspiracy.

Next week: is water bad for humans?

Who benefits from misleading information about minerals that affect human health?

Who benefits from deterioration of human health?

What temptation are they submitting to and what emotion are they going against?

They fell prey to temptations of the flesh. I only hope that individuals see what mistakes they have made and try not to commit those type of acts again.

reply to post by KatieVA


Some people are going to need more salt than others depending on the changes that occurred in our bodies by using salt over many generations. The kidneys can use salt to help detox and some people excrete a of salt because of this. Everyone is different and has different needs. There cannot be a pancea for all people, everyone has his own pancea. If there is not enough salt in the body at the cellular level and salt is eaten, a person excretes the cellular fluids and they wind up bloating up if the kidneys can't excrete them fast enough.

I have a condition where I use a lot of salt up, the doctors have given it a name..Hyper something. I know I have to eat a lot of salt. There are complications with eating this much salt though so I am trying to find other ways to cure the problem and not just treat it. I know others with this condition so I hope to find a cure by testing it on myself after studying many things. My problem started from taking Depakote and other similar epileptic drugs for about five years. Alcohol would work but I'm not much of a drinker anymore.

reply to post by rickymouse


Thanks for that - interesting stuff. It didn't answer any of my questions though. I want to know what the cavemen folk did. Were they using salt on their food? Or were they living perfectly healthy lives without it?

reply to post by KatieVA


The Indians here in America were mining salt for as long as their history seems to go back. When the white man came here he took over their mines and exploited them. The Indians had a very large trade network and I am sure salt was traded extensively. If groundwater contains salt, as it does in much of the USA...soft water...Not much salt was needed. In areas where the groundwater is hard then salt was more needed. Remember that everything that grows with soft groundwater also absorbs more salt. This is important when considering requirements of the body.

Originally posted by monkcaw
If the question is "should we limit our intake of salt" I say yes only if your body has a hard time getting rid of it.

There ya go! It's not about what we take in. If we can't get rid of the sodium, then a problem arises. And most Americans have problems with salt retention. This stems from our high carbohydrate diet that keeps insulin levels rather high. Insulin, in turn, causes sodium retention.

reply to post by interupt42


These aren't new studies or findings. If you look back at the literature, there's never been enough evidence to recommend salt restriction.

And the studies mentioned in the OP are conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration:

The Cochrane Collaboration is an independent nonprofit organization consisting of a group of over 28,000 volunteers in more than 100 countries.[3] The collaboration was formed in response to a felt need to organize medical research information in a systematic way. Such organized information constitutes Evidence. Evidence is required to make effective health care decisions and to understand where more research is actually needed.[4]
The Collaboration aims to provide compiled scientific evidence to aid well informed health care decisions. It conducts Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health care interventions and tries to disseminate the results and conclusions derived from them.[5][6] A few more recent reviews have also studied the results of non-randomized, observational studies. The systematic reviews are published in the Cochrane Library.

They specifically review the body of research on a given topic, sodium and hypertension/heart disease in this case, and set high standards for the studies included in their review. They'll weed out any poor quality studies; identify industry support; identify misconduct; and identify conformation bias. With the information they gather, they provide a detailed summary and conclusion of the review that determines the combined results of highest quality studies on a subject.

They've dismantled the "vitamin c prevents colds" myth. They've dismantled the anti-oxidant supplementation myth as well as many others.

Originally posted by SaltireWarrior
I'm still of the opinion that too much salt is bad for you, I don't really care what one doctor says.

One doctor didn't say this. There's no real evidence that salt restriction prevents hypertension/heart disease. And there's more evidence that reducing salt intake is actually damaging.

Most of the world consumes more salt than Americans yet they don't experience the amount of cardiovascular events that we do.

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


Americans drink more milk than others in the world do and it's homogenized. Here's an article on Homogenization and it's effect on blood vessels. en.wikipedia.org... Salt has nothing to do with this. There are so many problems with our diets nowadays that it's almost impossible to pin things down. I'm trying to figure out the best places to start and have read at least twenty thousand articles over the last six years on the subject of foods and food preparation. It's so screwed up it's hard to figure what is the best solution. I'm pretty sure each generation forms the base for the next generation but that base doesn't include corrections for the mind. Every other generation may have a fix for that.

Originally posted by DJM8507
Doesn't a high salt diet lead to renal failure?

A high anything diet will always lead to some kind of failure. And then eventually we all die. Moderation will keep you alive about as long as anything. And then you die.

Hey! Yesterday coffee gave me cancer but today it keeps me from getting cancer! ha!

I try to limit my salt intake for hypertension, and it does help - as does meditation. I don't want to be on 20 pills a day to combat death, as it kind of happens anyway. Everything we eat is full of salt, so I don't worry about not getting enough - I'm getting more than enough even with concious limitation.

The old saying rings true IMO: too much of anything yadda yadda yadda.