Image: TooFarNorth/Flickr
-
What a Plant Knows
How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect’s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they...
Read More »
For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.
This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.
Fears over salt first surfaced more than a century ago. In 1904 French doctors reported that six of their subjects who had high blood pressure—a known risk factor for heart disease—were salt fiends. Worries escalated in the 1970s when Brookhaven National Laboratory's Lewis Dahl claimed that he had "unequivocal" evidence that salt causes hypertension: he induced high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. (Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day.)
Dahl also discovered population trends that continue to be cited as strong evidence of a link between salt intake and high blood pressure. People living in countries with a high salt consumption—such as Japan—also tend to have high blood pressure and more strokes. But as a paper pointed out several years later in the American Journal of Hypertension, scientists had little luck finding such associations when they compared sodium intakes within populations, which suggested that genetics or other cultural factors might be the culprit. Nevertheless, in 1977 the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl's work.
Scientific tools have become much more precise since then, but the correlation between salt intake and poor health has remained tenuous. Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day. In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79. The review concluded that "intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials." A 2003 Cochrane review of 57 shorter-term trials similarly concluded that "there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake."
See what we're tweeting about
113 Comments
Add Comment"wild extrapolations", I kinda suspected something like that would pop up at the end of a well researched truthful article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have ate salt all my life, even more than what the USDA, the FDA and any other for-profit - non-profit organization recommends and my blood pressure has always been normal for my age. About ten years ago, I stopped cooking with salt and started cooking with sea salt and my blood pressure is still normal for my age. If you think that is unreal, I have smoked since I was five years old (I started back when smoking was cool.) and my lungs are as clean as a non-smoker.
These anti-everything people and these people who place the blame on everything but themselves, should realize that you can lie to some of the people some of the times, but you cannot lie to all the people all the time.
JamesDavis, you're deluding yourself - there's no way your "lungs are as clean as a non-smoker." But, let's face it, the sad truth is that genetics do play a role and some smokers live to a ripe old age and feel great, others live to a ripe old age and feel like crap, and still others never make it to old age, ripe or otherwise. Roll the dice. But you shouldn't take your personal experience and extrapolate to the rest of humanity - that's bad science. Tell your story and be hopeful that you live a long and cancer-free life. Oh, and don't blow any smoke in my face.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't see how anyone can say salt has no effect on health. My basic nursing course gave me enough knowledge to know salt causes intercompatmental shifts of fluids. This is what causes the disease processes they are saying salt does not cause. Sure, some people have great genes and never have any trouble with salt but you can't know that until your middle aged and by then it's to late.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs usual it may have been the food companies that raised the alarm about high-salt diets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe lo-sodium salts that are marketed to people as alternatives sell at 10 times the price of normal salt. Of course food marketing companies have a reason to warn against excessive sodium!!
The interpretation of the results from these studies are subject to controversy, too bad you don't bring up any of those issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyeah the voice of reason. As to intercompartmental shifts in fluids, this is an issue in some disease states such as congestive heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, kidney disease/failure, but a healthy individual with normal homeostatic mechanisms can and will rid the body of excess salt. The body spends much of its energy to maintain homeostasis, to think it wouldn't eliminate excess salt requires one to ignore all human physiology. As to what you were taught in nursing school, you were taught dogma that everyone else agreed upon due to horrible interpretation of data (hence the point of this article). You were probably also taught to give diabetics a standard ADA high carb diet which numerous studies have now shown to be harmful (as would anyone with any knowledge of insulin and metabolism).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease do not assume what I was taught in school as you were not there nor do you know my practical expierence. My practical expierence tells me most people will be slightly swollen after consuming a lot of salt. Yes, a healthy, young body will waste this but if you do not have good genetics consuming salt will cause health issues later in life. Just as smoking, hydrogenated oil, being over weight, excessive drinking and a sedenitary lifestyle will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suppose that food labels will be seen now saying MORE SALT! ENDORSED BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisre Dahl's rat research from the 70s, i'd very much like to see an abstract of his work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgiven the relative atomic weights of sodium and chlorine (approx. 22.9 and 3.55 respectively) and assuming that sodium was provided to the rats in the form of salt, the rats would have been fed the "human equivalent" of well over a kilogram of salt every day. i wonder that the experiment didn't kill the animals outright, to say nothing of the relevance of such bizarre research. (any chemists out there, please feel free to verify my math!)
The guy in Journal of Chronic Diseases said the kidney was designed; that is false. That kind of language is not acceptable because it is so false; it was designed in like continental plates design mountains... it's playing with words, or promoting creationism, so it should not be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, yes, salting the heart really preserves it well... it cures the muscles & makes them last longer. Haha. Seriously though the topic doesn't do much for me because I eat so healthily anyway... a little sea salt on the lentils, some sea salt on the mashed potatoes, Bob's your uncle, no excess.
'you stopped cooking with salt & started cooking with sea salt'... ok, that's like, not English.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"you have been smoking tobacco for decades and your lungs are as clean as a non-tobacco-smoker's"... ok, that claim is so stupid, it's bad. To debate the danger of tobacco smoke is dangerous; it doesn't take a genius to figure out tobacco carcinogenic and that the lungs in question are probably in very bad shape, if the story is true, but it does take a basic level of intelligence to figure it out... I mean, basic by modern standards.
This kind of article invites some misunderstanding; people love saying, "they ('the experts') used to such x, but now they don't say that, ergo, science is useless"... as in the case of the comment I'm replying to which took the suicidal leap from salt to tobacco.
'you stopped cooking with salt & started cooking with sea salt'... ok, that's like, not English.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"you have been smoking tobacco for decades and your lungs are as clean as a non-tobacco-smoker's"... ok, that claim is so stupid, it's bad. To debate the danger of tobacco smoke is dangerous; it doesn't take a genius to figure out tobacco carcinogenic and that the lungs in question are probably in very bad shape, if the story is true, but it does take a basic level of intelligence to figure it out... I mean, basic by modern standards.
This kind of article invites some misunderstanding; people love saying, "they ('the experts') used to such x, but now they don't say that, ergo, science is useless"... as in the case of the comment I'm replying to which took the suicidal leap from salt to tobacco.
"churruta", as usual, you are the smart one and know more about me than I know about me. Would you like to see my lung x-rays and talk to my military doctors in Ashland, NC? I don't have to blow smoke in your face, and I don't think I would want to get that close to your radiated body anyways. Just step outside and take a deep breath and you will inhale all the smoke you can handle from the fossil fuel power plants and the nuclear power plants. Try taking care of yourself and eating the proper foods that are low in fats and your will probably not become diseased or obese. There is no PROOF that smoking tobacco causes diseases - first-hand or second-hand smoke. Every time you sneeze, you clean your lungs, and every time you eat garlic, you regulate your blood pressure. So, don't tell me that you know more about me than I know about me...and, your scare tactics does not work on people who know better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLol you sound like one of those types that gets offended when someone says god bless you to them at a supermarket after they sneeze. I don't believe the author of that article had a secret creationist agenda hes subversively slipping into his work. And saying that the wording is so provably false is not accurate, its not provenly true but neither is saying "it was designed in like continental plates design mountains". What I mean is that the idea that all life evolves through purely random processes is fast growing antiquated. We know now that things you do things you eat and many other factors all can change your genetics in your lifetime as well. Whether or not anyone any sort of divine intelligence exists we are learning that evolution itself is an intelligent process. And I think the more we will learn about it the more accurate it will be to say that a liver was designed for a function rather than a liver does things because of random mutations which happened to be beneficial. Basically once you accept that life itself is inherently intelligent at some level the concept of things having a "design" of any sort won't be offensive to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyhow I think the article was great. People need to stop holding to these beliefs of salt being so evil when the science for it was never really there to begin with. This article may not change things overnight but maybe people will eventually stop focusing on the old dogmatic belief that salt = bad. And then maybe we could focus on ridding food of the things in it that are actually doing more damage like certain preservatives artificial sweeteners and all the other sorts of toxic and mildly carcinogenic things they throw into food nowadays. But I'm sure most the food companies wouldn't care for this as they would rather sell people reduced sodium dishes and act like they are helping instead of actually just making healthier food.
Meant to post that as a reply to toby's first post btw ^^
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(if it wasn't obvious)
Sadly enough, this is totally anecdotal, the only documentation that exists is blood pressure reading by a prominent research study team at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital but what happened to me has nothing to do with their research. Starting back in 2009 I participated in a research study for a device to control labile hypertension. While the device was successful at reducing my blood pressure their was a period of time when the device was off and I was awaiting the installation of a new battery .Without the device on my blood pressure was in the 160/98 range- with a full array of blood pressure medications. I decided to try something new -on my own. I started a raw diet. No eggs, no meat, no grain, no dairy. No processed foods. No spices. No salt. I didn't eat anything you couldn't pick from a plant and bite into. I ate a little sushi for protein. They haven't been able to continue me in the study. My blood pressure is too low. I kept getting readings like 103/72. They recommended that I see my own Doctor to have my blood pressure medication reduced. Admittedly I have lost excess weight on this diet but the dramatic change in blood pressure had occurred before I even lost five pounds. The only thing the Doctors at Columbia could attribute it to was lowered Sodium. They estimated that under such a strict diet my Sodium intake per day was less than a half a gram- much lower than most low Sodium diets and that my kidneys could not hold on the the Sodium that they retain. I will leave it for you to ponder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBoth sides of this story are incorrect. The important factor in strokes and heart attacks is the ratio of Potassium to Sodium which ideally is about 3 or 4. There is a similar ratio for Magnesium to Calcium. Food labelling regulations make it very difficult for Americans to track Potassium and Magnesium content in foods [Smarter manufacturers add them to their food labels without being required to do so]. Smart consumers let software do the work like Kathleen's Diet Planner. For example, one brand of Potato Chips, while having a lot of Sodium also has a very high Potassium content so the ratio is not too badly compromised if one eats them with something else rich in Potassium. Other potato chips cannot be balanced because Sodium levels are so high. Potassium and Magnesium are far harder to find in the diets of most Americans so that is one reason one is always prodded to eat low fat sources of these minerals like dark green vegetables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is nothing new - there used to be some very striking demonstrations in biophysics classes of beating hearts and neurotransmission when these chemical concentrations were altered around heart tissue or that of neurons. Do schools no longer do this?
Finland did the longitudinal human research decades ago and passed laws requiring a set ratio of Potassium to Sodium in salt they use for processed foods and baked goods. That single change reduced their stroke rate (and the resultant costs of medical care) by very large factors. This information is easily available in the research that has been published.
Note that not all sea salt reflects the mineral concentration of the oceans - it depends on how the salt is processed, So one can see a label saying sea salt and still not get much of the other minerals.
Those who ignore these important ratios are asking for trouble - ask any decent athletic coach about the importance of mineral balance in his athletes.
In practice, a low sodium diet is safer to aim for even when admitted to a hospital because sodium content is so overdone in the US. The "expert" nutritionists seem to still be ignorant of these basic principles when planning "normal" meals. But they seem to have better planning information available for the low sodium regimen.
Proper minerally-balanced diets are not bland - quite the opposite. They typically are far tastier than the usual American dinner fare.
In any case, this all is nothing new. It is well-established biophysics and used to be part of a doctor's training. Certainly it is part of sports medicine!
It'll be nice if this turns out true: no more feeling guilty over cheese or my lumpy kosher salt on snacks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll watch the follow-ups with interest.
-dlj.
Bayougodess, please explain why an individual who goes to any hospital in the US for a few days or an extended stay gets immediately hooked up to a saline IV drip. This is usually 3 liters per day at 0.9% NaCl or 27 grams of salt a day, plus whatever comes in with the food (a minimum of 6 grams a day). That's at least 33 grams of salt a day or 5 1/2 times the recommended amount! Yet, they come around and check your blood pressure every 4-6 hours and....its perfectly normal! No extra-special genes, no intercompatmental shifts of fluids, no blue smoke and magic - just normal human physiology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe salt health debate is a myth - and all the public health agencies push it for two reasons 1) most people believe the myth is true and 2) there is no population in the world that has ever managed to achieve the goals of 4-6 grams of salt that is being recommended (1,500 mg - 2,300 mg sodium per day), so there will never be a way to prove that their recommendations are all wrong.
For those that are not aware, we eat less salt now than ever before in recorded history. This is because throughout history, all food was preserved with salt. Only after WWII did our salt consumption drop, because refrigeration replaced salt as the main means of refrigeration. Our consumption has remained flat since the mid-1950s, as anyone who has read the medical literature knows.
If we could ever go down to the levels of sodium that are recommended, a great many people will get very sick from diabetes, cardiovascular disease and loss of cognition - all published in the peer-reviewed literature - all due to elevated renin/aldosterone resulting from low sodium intakes. A recent Harvard study demonstrated that healthy young people placed on a low-sodium diet developed insulin resistance within 7 days!
The potassium arguement is valid. The real Mediterranean diet as practiced in Italy) is very heart healthy and 40% higher in salt than the US diet (Published in European J Clin Nutrition). It's because of all the potassium in the vegetables and SALads. The very word SALad comes from SAL - salt. You can't eat all those healthy, but bitter, plant nutrients without salt.
It's time that this urban myth that everyone including many physicians believe is dispelled by the actual clinical evidence. Unfortunately, our great public heath institutions have let us down badly and it is left to consumers to connect the dots.
This piece in Scientific American is one of the best researched, most objective and rational papers to be published in a great many years.
You ate far less fat, processed sugar, etc. It's difficult to imagine that the results could be attributed to just "low sodium", given the drastic changes in your diet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, do you dispute the studies by defending your "knowledge" based on studies that were flawed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@TobyNSaunders, I get what you are saying and it is exactly this kind of play on words that creationist latch onto. But I must admit that I often use the term myself. Obviously I never imply that traits were literally designed, furthermore saying that something was designed does not imply a sentient designer, it is simply colourful language to explain that the phenotype arose to address a specific problem. I personally do not know of a better way to express it without it feeling forced or awkward. I also don't believe that language should lose its ability to speak figuratively just because some evil people will leverage it to their advantage. I disagree with dumbing down language so that the simple minded won't be confused. In my opinion the best way to deal with ignorance is through education not capitulation. If we can speak figuratively of the natural world as mother-nature I don't think it is crossing the line to speak of her as a designer. This will not confuse the intended audience and will ultimately do nothing to further entrench a deeply entrenched ideology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed the potassium-sodium balance proposition is plausible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo my mind the point is that our blood is based on what sea water was like a few tens of millions of years ago, when the mammals first started out on land. Thus it is "natural" or at least plausible that salt should be both vital and dangerous in oversupply.
We are big bags full of all sorts of little bags, so getting all the osmotic pressures more or less correct is pretty important. Ion pumps at the cellular level can do part of this important balancing work, but we make their environment harsh for them at our peril, right?
Now then, there was a guy in here who thought his Army record was relevant to all this. Oh, yeah, he was from South Carolina...
@James, "There is no PROOF that smoking tobacco causes diseases", I wish I had a nickel for every idiot who thought that by posting an emphatic statement they could single headedly undo years of peer reviewed research. You are full of crap. And despite your over inflated ego, the medical community does not make policy based on your personal anecdotal evidence. You are posting on the wrong site. This is about science, not delusions of grandeur and conspiracy theories. Just type in Roswell at the google prompt and you will find yourself a home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot that that is evidence of pathology per se, but is it true, as we have always believed, that salt increases water retention?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is all so wrong. First of all, there is a difference between sodium and salt. The reason sodium (the cause of high blood pressure) builds up within your body is that it comes in forms not balanced by a mineral counter-ion, but by something that does not get excreted along with it, such as an amino acid in the form of flavor enhancers (the majority of sodium intake). When you eat sodium chloride, you piss out the exact same amount of sodium chloride. When you eat sodium glutamate, the glutamate gets used, and the sodium builds up, and maybe steals another essential ion like chloride, sulfate, bicarbonate, etc for excretion. This makes you unhealthy as you build up sodium and deplete other things we are already low in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, if you compare table salt to sea salt, there is another issue. If one eats too much NaCl without the rest of the minerals in the exact concentration they are present in the sea (and earlier animal/human blood only 100 years ago), you don't get those other minerals such as magnesium, calcium, etc as your body removes all the sodium chloride. There are 100 elements in sea salt, and two in table salt (not counting the disgusting poisonous additives that are anti-caking and flowing agents, and iodine.)
If one has high blood pressure, the course of action is to stop eating processed food (containing anything but sea salt, however a little table salt [NaCl] is okay). And eat up to 6 grams per day of sea salt. This will slowly balance out the unusually high reaction to and amount of sodium in the blood, fixing the blood pressure issue.
My reaction exactly. I wouldn't advise letxequalx to change anything now (I'm sure the "Doctors at Columbia" would also not want change anything now that you're 'fixed'), but unless you omitted mentioning a barrage of test results that isolates the blood pressure effect from all the other changes, there's no way to determine that it was produced by the reduction in salt alone, although even Columbian Doctors often make guesses and express opinions... Since you changed 'everything', 'anything' could have produced the observed result.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of sodium in foods depends more on what is added at the factory than on what one adds at the table. Even the better restaurants typically use factory foods. Our bodies evolved without factories as part of the food supply.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, one of the AHA "heart healthy" soups is produced by Campbell's and has a K:Na of less than 2[which is one of the better K:Na of commercial soups ] but contains 10gm of sugars per serving - most from high fructose corn syrup. Now why would one add corn syrup to tomato soup, especially one that is supposed to be "heart healthy"?
The same company puts out a clam chowder that is not AHA approved but it has a slightly better K:Na and only has 3 gm of sugars (no added corn syrup).
My homemade tomato soup is made from a recipe I picked up in Portugal and has neither added sodium nor corn syrup and tastes better than any commercial varieties - the K:Na is 50 so it is wonderful to balance out the high sodium content of most breads and crackers. If anyone asks for the salt shaker, a rare occurrence, I pull one down from the top kitchen shelf and he or she can add as much as desired.
And that is really the point. One can always add sodium to a food but one cannot remove it once added. All people can do if they must eat factory food is to use KCl to help neutralize all the sodium served at most restaurants(which levels can be quite astronomical). Meats nowadays, even chicken, are typically injected with a high sodium brine (the extra water means one pays a chicken or beef price for water and the high sodium is to mask the fact that the meat has so much water in it). Meats without such adulteration are good sources of potassium.
Where are the regulators who know all of this too??? Do they feel overwhelmed by the pressure of the big food corporations???
I once looked up the legislation sponsored by Kerry(Heinz fortune) and almost all of it had to do with the allowed dilution of tomato products and what kind of cheaper metals can be used to pipe the products. And he is not the only senator to produce short-sighted profit-enhancing legislation having to do with factory foods. Where is the media shining light on these sorts of shenanigans?
Intake of excess salt does cause "intercompatmental shifts of fluids", but that's only temporary ... until the kidneys get rid of that excess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, it's true that "kidneys are designed to excrete excess salt" ... by evolution!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCardia Salt was developed in Finland as PanSalt. Not only does Cardia have 54 percent less sodium than table salt, it also contains potassium and magnesium. Most people are unable to tell the difference between Cardia Salt and table salt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Fins recognized that the vast majority of sodium in our diets comes not from the our own table salt but rather from sodium added to the processed foods we consume. That’s why in Finland they have been adding PanSalt to processed foods for years.
You seem to be implying that smoking isn't hazaradous to your health.... which is ludicrous. It seems that you might be missing the point of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorrelation vs. causation? I wonder whether anyone has actually looked at the possibility that the cravings that those early 'salt fiends' with high blood pressure had might be a better clue to the cause of high blood pressure than the salt itself. Salt intake and storage may be a symptom of the underlying process, rather than a cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm well salt is not as dangerous as presumed, still dangerous if you don't get it or if you get too much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSchools and education like nursingschools also teach you to be critical toward what you are learning from them and what you observe in clinique.
Most factors are detemide by the genes.
If you start smooking in an early age study shows us it will damage the development of the lungs, so if you never been exposed to smoke, smug and particles you lungs might had been even better.
Don't always trust the doctor or the radiograph.
Think that sums up the discussion here. Which I find more interested than the article.
Just a short comment on "my blood pressure has always been normal for my age." There is nothing comforting about "for my age" as more people have high blood pressure as they get older and the average goes up. One either has normal blood pressure or one does not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSodium, as it appears in processed and restaurant food is at dangerous, sometimes toxic, levels especially since potassium (not labelled) is at dangerously low levels in these same foods. It cannot be removed once added so the addition of sodium to processed and restaurant foods made for the general public should be controlled and enforced. It would solve the problem if food manufacturers would add potassium in fixed ratio to the sodium like the Fins do. Strokes and heart attacks are very expensive to treat and if the rates can be cut by 30-40%, as in Finland, it would make a huge difference for health care costs in this country.
Manufacturers might even pick up a few customers if they add the potassium to the label -- if I don't see potassium level I don't buy it. And I've found a local butcher who doesn't brine his fresh meats (lo and behold his beef tastes like beef, chicken like chicken).
A simple hamburger and fries at one of the restaurants in my area contains about 3 days worth of sodium in one burger - the big burgers are worse. Remember that beef is ordinarily a good source of potassium. It is an unusual night when the ambulances do not pick up some man suffering heart problems from the place. Some don't even make it out the door. And it is almost always a man - most women eat a lot of salads and not so much meat and go easy on the fries or order cottage cheese instead of fries.
One restaurant in Texas even puts "Heart Attack" in its name. Since when is that a funny thing? I think it is criminal.
@JamesDavis: Sorry to say, that's being short-sighted. I am <40, quite physically fit and always have been (gym and daily exercise regular) and have both moderately elevated BP and cholesterol levels. And guess what -- I eat a ton of salt. I was on an angiotension inhibitor for a while and that didn't work so great, so the doc put me on a 'water pill' (makes you urinate more often to expel salt). Lo and behold, it works, I have normal BP for years now. The relationships within the body are very complex and interwoven, but I'll sum it up by saying: everyone responds differently to everything (food, exercise, pathogens, medication...), so your "I'm perfect, it's never hurt me!" stance is very self centered and short sighted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh and, you'd better keep an eye on the smoking. You're not as immortal as you think (it affects more than just your lungs).
I can't say that this article convinced me that scientists who question salt are to be dismissed. Not so fast. Not mentioned in this article is the finding that Michael Alderman has been a paid consultant to the Salt Institute for decades, something that Alderman failed to disclose in journal articles, and impacted on the ICJME disclosure requirements. The Centers for Science in the Public Interest <a href=<"http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/jacn_letter_1.pdf>" has noted it and his failure to disclose in years past contributed to journals requiring disclosure. I hope that Scientific American acknowledges this. I think Frito-Lay and the chip companies have a lot more to lose if salt restrictions go into effect. I was amused to get a press release this morning from the salt industry claiming that this article in this prestigious scientific magazine has put the issue to rest. So everyone, go out and get your chips. Big money keeps salt in our diet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHypertension affects at least 1 out of 4 adults in the US.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"ln 1972 due to the highest cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality rate in the world, the North Karelia Project began as a national pilot and demonstration programme for CVD prevention. A reduction in the population levels of the well-established risk factors (smoking, elevated cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure (BP)) was the main intermediate objective. A comprehensive community-based intervention involving health services, nongovernmental organisations, industry, media and public policy was developed. After the initial period (1972–1977), the project experiences have been actively used for heart health programmes in Finland. The evaluations, involving population surveys and disease registers, have shown that population risk-factor levels have greatly reduced and consequently the age-adjusted coronary heart disease mortality rate among 35- to 64- year-old male population has reduced from 1970 to 1995 by 73% in North Karelia and 65% in all of Finland."
http://www.nature.com/jhh/journal/v18/n8/full/1001696a.html
This week's interview on Dr. Kiki's Science Hour is with Marc Pelletier who discusses salt imbalance, water toxicity, strokes, brain swelling (how to avoid the craniectomy such as used on Giffords) and other topics related to Sodium. How to prevent cells from "popping".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 40 year plus history of salt, diet and health is a classic example of how "expert based" medicine is doomed to failure. Since many experts rise to their positions through single issue science and their charisma rather than via wide based experience in science, it is not surprising to find them resistant to contrary data. Their entire reputation as experts are tied to the issue; if it falls so do they. Consequently their positions become neo-religious in nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank god we have a wider system of investigation that works however slowly to counter such people. However the "expert panel" style of national health care to which we are headed, there will be little interest in funding such research. Once formal power is conferred to such groups the momentum will be to reinforce the panels positions. Funding sources will line up to help drive the system. There will be no benefit in slaying sacred cows so with it will disappear independent investigation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy would they need to do a special study? Haven't they advised people with high blood pressure to reduce their salt intake for many, many years? There's your experiment. Has it worked?
The problem with articles like this & all the "... we can really eat all we want of XXXX" is the lack of overall context. The one thing we know about our diet is we have an obesity epidemic that is clearly going to have major health impacts. If this article encourages parents to think a
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBig Mac meal is healthy food for their kids then we end up going backwards.
Hi salt content foods generally mask lots of other overboarding in excessive fats, calories etc. ANy article of this sort has to place our dietary standards in an overall context of where there is consensus on healthy requirements
I also ask why their is no identification of the background of the author of this article
Some people will take the article to the opposite far end which is unfortunate but not a reason to condemn the position. The fact is patients will only do so much of what a physicians tells them. The more draconian the changes the less they will do. Consequently when advising patients regarding life style changes HC providers must be cautious not to overload patients with demands. By definition this means we have to focus on those issues that make the greatest impacts on the disease process first. If the data is showing us that salt intake is not strongly linked to outcomes, we need to drop it in favor of more significant issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor people without heart failure this is good advise, but please make it clear that people with heart failure, who must reduce water retention or die, they must not use added salt!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMark Heinemann
Any adults not currently on any medication can try the experiment if you wish to do so. Check with your doctor first if you wish. Take diet planner software like Kathleen's Diet Planner and plan and eat well-balanced precisely measured meals for a week with adequate magnesium and so that the potassium to sodium ratio is at least three, 4 is better, and watch what it does to your blood pressure (take BP measurements every few hours - the software will chart the trend for you. BP fluctuates during the day) The software is inexpensive [use Google for details] and a small blood pressure cuff costs about $30 last time I checked. To wait until your heart fails or there is a stroke is not a good strategy since the research, despite this article to the contrary, is really quite clear about the long-term consequences of high blood pressure and the K:Na ratio. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The first discovery you will make is that it is not easy to maintain a K:Na ratio of 3 or 4 eating foods routinely available in the US. It can be done but not without some effort for most people --- which is the point to limiting sodium so that one can get enough potassium from food in a practical sense. However, the experiment is interesting and you will learn much about how your body feels for a few days away from high sodium levels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI visited to U.S.in 2001 spend 18Th days.I took my breakfast in MacDonald or same kind of eatery I found that in America of people are eating more salt and protons.I suffered mostly by constipation in U.S.I discovered why White people used toilet paper to clean dirt after going to toilet, if they don't use it they cannot clean the dirt.I myself used toilet paper in my tour..Why people of America intake so much salt? Is their food is not testy? Most American eat junk food they forget to drink pure water.Coca cola and other soft drink manufacturers brainwashed the people of America.I find out real reason.Western civilization is based fear.These manufacturers taking advantage of weakness of people.They constantly show them fear through advertizement, talk show and completely brain wash the American people.Avarice and fear both are so strong weapon show billion time and make people fool again and again. Forever best manipulating remedy to cheat the people and earn the money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article and most of the comments are full of the most misinformation I have ever seen in an article from a "reputable" publication. "In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease." Did it not occur to anyone that it is people with heart conditions for whom less sodium would be excreted in their urine because they are the ones (properly)advised to use less sodium by their doctors? Isn't it likely that those with heart conditions are the ones more likely to die from heart disease?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know... In childhood (in the humid southeast with no air-conditioning) I ate salt like there was no tomorrow. Salt on everything, including smoked ham. As an adult (older middle aged now), I've moderated, but still use more than the average Joe. I love salt. My blood pressure? Fine. My kidneys? Fine. In fact, when I've cut back on salt because we are 'supposed to', I think I feel less well. So, after this study, I'm going to enjoy my salt guilt free.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt sounds like you're generalizing what 'most' Americans eat. It's a myth (I believe) that most Americans live on fast food. I don't, most of my American friends and family don't. My cousins in Europe eat no more healthily than me (although they actually believe we live on BigMacs and french fries). So American fast food diets are a myth, I believe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if eating a lot of salt might cause kidney damage long-term, just like eating a lot of protein - it's a lot of work for the kidneys.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso eating a lot of salt may be associated with a higher risk of osteoporosis and stomach cancer.
I wonder if eating a lot of salt might cause kidney damage long-term, just like eating a lot of protein - it's a lot of work for the kidneys.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso eating a lot of salt may be associated with a higher risk of osteoporosis and stomach cancer.
So there may be risks to high salt intake, besides the possible cardiovascular risks discussed in the article.
Will it next be
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistime to end the war on carbon!
Occassionally while on my reduced salt diet I will feel a little weak and out of sorts. The cure is a hand full of salty potato chips. Works every time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate to be snotty, Mr. JamesDavis, but the proper verb (past participle) is "eaten" not "ate."
Are you really arguing that smoking has no impact on lungs or effect on lung cancer? Take off the tin foil hat man. You are simply insane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I seen in my 18 Th days tour that I wrote.Main question is why American eat more salt?In all kind of food they used more salt what is reason behind this habit? I think in all junk food there is more salt why they eat junk food? No time to prepare food at home?laziness?Junk food cheap? Eating junk food fashion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSea salt is salt. NaCl.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm sure it's a typo, but the atomic weight of Cl is 35.5 amu, not 3.55. But you're right, to give a rat the equivalent of 500 g of sodium a day would require about 1.09 Kg (2.4 lbs) of NaCl. That's a hell of a lot of chips.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou've seen your lungs?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat? You think mcdonalds wants people to fear salt? You really think that low salt alternatives sell better?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt amazes me how people will abandon common sense based on one obviously flawed and biased study. Practical expierence has taught me salt, in any form, causes health problems. Just because you can eat salt with seemingly no negative effects when younger does not mean it's ok. We can do many thing when we are young with no effect but those things wear on our body and cause probems later on. Yes, we hang bags of ns in the hospital but we do it to keep the vein open and D/C it for a hep loc as soon as the patient is stable. I have never let a bag of anything run on a patient that did not need it. Yes, the kidneys are designed to waste sodium and balance intercompartmental space/shifts. But, does that mean we can expect to abuse our bodies by taking advantage of it's robust state when young? Ask any pro football player if they know the wear and tear is going to effect them later in life. They will say yes. Plus we have no idea if we have good genes or bad regarding this, and most, medical issues. Why not take care of ones self? Because of my practical expierence I have eaten little or no salt for the last 27 years. Food tasts just fine to me without salt. Salt is a aquired taste. If you wish to eat salt that is your choice but the chances are good it will have some effect on you later on. Just for the record I am a female of 54 years of age and my bp a week ago was 106/61.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's evolutionary: We are the only primates to have acquired the habit of eating all our food with a pinch of salt - or much, much more! Why? Because of the physiological salivation reflex which makes us automatically salivate - even if it's junk food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich is why junk food, chips, ham, etc. are greatest profit-makers for the 'Food' industrialists, who know full well that salt, due to the 'salt-lick-reflex', is as addictive as sugar and fat. ( A recent Finnish study has found evidence of its addictiveness through brain scans showing the very same spots are lighting up after a salt 'hit' as if it was an opiate.
Here's the simple answer as to why our blood pressure rises after a salty food 'kick': Any extra salt intake (other than through plant-fixed organically bound salt) has to be DILUTED, so as not to upset the natural balance.
NINE parts of water are needed to flush out ONE part of salt. This means, more pumping work for the heart muscle, because water, as we all know, is heavy stuff. And harder pumping means: more blood pressure: With long-term damaging wear&tear stress effects, e.g., on blood vessels, cell membranes, and kidney tubules, which, with their tiny filtering tubes, were not originally 'designed' for such a high-pressure job.
Most of the salt we ingest is hidden: in cheese, bread, sausages,pasta, salami, ham, sauces, even in chocolate.
The myth that we have to eat a lot of salt after perspiring has been debunked by a study done on bushmen of all people!
The other African story, of elephants doing a regular 'pilgrimage' to a cave, just to lick the rock salt, only proves one thing to me: the true addictiveness of sodium chloride. Thanks to the nr. 37 entry, we know to whom we owe the pro-salt study: namely the salt lobby man No.1 himself!
And the Cochrane Institute , it has been found in the past, is not quite as independent as it claims to be either, regarding halogens & public health: vide the water fluoridation history over the past 50 years.
SciAm is off base on this one. Or perhaps Moyer has been influenced too much by stuff from the Salt Institute. In any case, SciAm and Moyer must have gone to press before the appearance on Monday of the article (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/171/13/1183) by the CDC in Archives of Internal Medicine showing that mortality rates rise by 20% for each gram of salt consumed per day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article was about the myth of the relationship of heart disease and salt, and hypertension and salt, not fluid shifts. Salt can indeed change one's health - just not in the way that it has been traditionally thought. Personally - I consume what would be considered large amounts of sodium. My blood pressure always stays on the dead side of 100/70, unless Obama has been giving speeches.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGenetics is the ONLY player here. You are how you are. If salt raises your blood pressure, lower your salt intake. If you need to lose weight, diet and exercise. If you want to smoke, you have a 20% chance of contracting lung cancer. But the point here, the real gem, is that *you* have some of the answers before the quiz hits your desk. Family history.
Ok, I can't believe this. It looks exactly like the flame wars we used to do back in the 80's, before the internet. If some fact or study doesn't quite agree with your idea of how things should be, then it is obviously wrong. Here's one that strings a whole bunch of them together...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Here's the simple answer as to why our blood pressure rises after a salty food 'kick': Any extra salt intake (other than through plant-fixed organically bound salt) has to be DILUTED, so as not to upset the natural balance.
NINE parts of water are needed to flush out ONE part of salt. This means, more pumping work for the heart muscle, because water, as we all know, is heavy stuff. And harder pumping means: more blood pressure: With long-term damaging wear&tear stress effects, e.g., on blood vessels, cell membranes, and kidney tubules, which, with their tiny filtering tubes, were not originally 'designed' for such a high-pressure job."
The original poster will recognize her own hand. The one that got me was 'Here's the simple'. You can pretty much stop reading after that, because there is no simple reason. However, it's compounded by the 9 parts thing, extra work, etc. Hmm. Salt, in a term everyone can relate to, loves water. Blood is thick, people. Water by comparison is very thin. Being ionic, does salt thicken or thin blood? Dunno - and that's an in-vivo question.
Since you read these things, you are at least in a Science forum. PLEASE give up dogma. When I see a study in a subject I'm interested in, the first thing I want to see is the protocol - not the data. If you 'know it' - are you sure you know it?
Oh - and by the way - you well-meaning souls who use only sea-salt? It's ALL sea salt. Mined salt came from dried up shallow seas. If a seller (cellar?) claims that their product contains 'less sodium', it is true only in the sense that their 500 gram unit only contains 450 grams sodium chloride, the balance being largely salts of potassium, calcium, and magnesium in palatable and non-lethal quantities, and the filler being titanium dioxide and silica.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA 'natural' sea salt could probably be qualitatively identified. By a chem lab. With a mass spectrometer. Other than that, they're functionally identical.
Mark Pine gave a link to the recent study on salt by Quanhe Yang in the July 11 2011 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. But the link doesn't work unless you're a subscriber.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe study somewhat associated sodium intake with higher mortality and potassium intake with lower mortality. The strong association though was that a low *ratio* of sodium to potassium intake was associated with low mortality. (you can find summaries of this study online).
However, this was an epidemiological study, and I always question epidemiological studies. For example, getting a lot of sodium and not much potassium is probably strongly associated with eating a lot of junk food and not many fruits and vegetables.
And, people who have health problems like high blood pressure are going to be encouraged to reduce their salt intake. Some of them actually will, and this would dilute any observed association of high salt intake with high blood pressure. So studies that do not show an association are also questionable.
Salt causes hypertension and shortens life in rats, so it's a good bet it does in humans too. And according to http://foodandhealth.com/cpecourses/salt.php dietary salt also causes problems in chimps, the closest human relatives.
A high-salt diet causes a slow rise in blood pressure over decades, so lowering one's salt intake doesn't necessarily have an immediate effect on blood pressure. This may lead people to think wrongly that salt and blood pressure aren't related.
Since you read these things, you are at least in a Science forum. PLEASE give up dogma. When I see a study in a subject I'm interested in, the first thing I want to see is the protocol - not the data. If you 'know it' - are you sure you know it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"And according to http://foodandhealth.com/cpecourses/salt.php dietary salt also causes problems in chimps, the closest human relatives.
A high-salt diet causes a slow rise in blood pressure over decades"
Was the control group monitored for natural K/Na ratios from birth to death? Did they run a concurrent study on a third K/Na ratio? Was another tribe selected for possible genetic variations?
All of these things matter. The study's conclusion is meaningless if it is not backed up by at least convincing experiments that show more than 2 sigma results. If they don't have numbers, they jolly well better state in the first few paragraphs that their findings are based on conjectures that they have also verified experimentally - if only briefly, and their protocols and results as a footnote to be handed to a grad student.
Science is...science. It is not opinion. Statistics *can* be used, IF applied properly. You are most definitely not allowed to say "since I know this, then this reaction." You prove you know this first. Then you can say that the reaction follows.
Here is the abstract for the study on dietary salt raising blood pressure in chimps: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7489355
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article I mentioned at http://foodandhealth.com/cpecourses/salt.php says about this:
"A study of a colony of chimpanzees found that the progressive addition of salt to their largely natural diet resulted in a gradual rise in their BP over 20 months. The amount of salt in the chimps diets was similar to that found in a typical American diet. This significant rise in BP was then completely reversed within 6 months after being returned to their more natural diet. The evidence in animals is conclusive that simply increasing dietary salt is sufficient to cause increased BP and decreased life expectancy in virtually all mammals studied. Of course, animal studies alone cannot prove that excessive dietary salt is the primary cause of essential hypertension (HTN) in humans."
As I said I tend to believe animal studies more than epidemiological studies. And the evidence from animal studies isn't ambiguous that salt causes hypertension. The article also mentions a lot of epidemiological reasons to think that salt is the primary cause of essential hypertension.
There are a ton of references in that article - look them up and read them! Rather than throwing around accusations of "dogma" ...
I think people tend to be skeptical about salt/HTN link because salt consumption raises blood pressure over a lifetime, and it's not immediately reversible with a low-salt diet. If they eat a lot of salt now, their blood pressure may not be high yet, but they may still be on the road to developing high blood pressure. The article says "When comparing populations that add salt to their food to population that do not add salt, the average difference in systolic blood pressure is about 50 mmHg in people above age 60y", and they give a reference for that.
Also a lot of salt is hidden in processed foods. People who are advised to eat a low-salt diet, and keep on eating processed food, are probably not actually eating a low-salt diet. When their blood pressure doesn't go down, they think, probably wrongly, that salt has nothing to do with it.
And people deny the salt/hypertension link for commercial reasons, like the Salt Institute. And because they just plain like salt :)
Here's a review article "Harmful effects of dietary salt in addition to hypertension": http://www.nature.com/jhh/journal/v16/n4/full/1001374a.html - full text.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is kind of scary. They list a lot of cardiovascular effects, as well as osteoporosis, bad effects on the kidneys, and stomach cancer.
They also say:
"There is a consensus that dietary sodium plays a significant role in determining the blood pressure of populations, the number of individuals who have a raised blood pressure, and its severity, and that it is responsible for much of the rise in pressure that occurs with age."
By contrast with the pro-salt evidence cited in this article, the anti-salt evidence seems to me very strong. Part of the pro-salt evidence is that low-salt diets aren't all that good at reducing hypertension. But, hypertension develops from DECADES of high salt consumption, and it isn't necessarily quickly reversible with a low salt diet.
Here's another review article: "The time course of salt-induced hypertension, and why it matters." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19079278
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the abstract:
"The epidemiology of salt-induced hypertension has been explored in detail in animal studies, in some cases involving exposures to excess dietary salt for much of the animal's lifespan. The results of these studies demonstrate the presence of two distinct time courses of the blood pressure response to a high salt intake: an acute (rapid) blood pressure response occurring over days to weeks, and a slow and progressive blood pressure response that develops over extremely long periods of time, amounting to a significant fraction of the lifespan in normal individuals. ...a progressively irreversible or 'self sustaining' component of salt-induced hypertension has also been demonstrated in rat studies."
Which means that if blood pressure doesn't go down much on a low-salt diet, that doesn't mean the hypertension wasn't caused by salt.
An anti-salt message is probably important to prevent irreversible damage from salt.
Actually, Dahl's rat study, where Dahl fed rats a high-salt diet and most developed hypertension, did NOT involve a diet that would have 500 gm of salt/day if extrapolated to humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe full text of this rat study is online at http://jem.rupress.org/content/114/2/231.full.pdf+html
He fed them chow with 8% or 11.6% added salt by weight.
If a human eats 2000 calories/day, and you assume their food has no water and no fiber - so it's all carbohydrates/protein/fat - and assuming a 30% fat diet - you get 29 gm added salt/day. The max recommended amount for people is 6 gm/day.
Of course the rat food would have had some water in it and some components without calories. More like 50 gm/day salt would be about accurate.
This is very salty, but not really off the scale - and understandable, since researchers often want to try exaggerated experiments to ge a quick result.
Dahl's study is certainly not the equivalent of 500 g/day salt for humans though! That spuriously makes his study look ridiculous.
Excelent points you may be interested in the book China Study by T. Collin Campbell PhD at Cornell. He discloses a number of these governmental shenanigans that will make your hair turn gray.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you about the author of the article exaggerating the salt intake in Dahl's experiment: in fact, it is worse than you say, as the article says humans would need to eat 500g of sodium per day, equivalent to nearly 1.3kg of salt! I don't think it's so easy to say what the human equivalent would be of an 8% or 11.6% salt diet in rats without a thorough study of Dahl's work, but if it is a percentage of the dry weight (and rats, I think, tend to eat drier food than humans), then I think your lower estimate of 29g per day for a human may be nearer the mark. That isn't inconceivable: earlier this year, the BBC here in the UK found a one-portion dish from a takeaway with 27g of salt in it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article's account of the Cochrane Collaboration's meta-analysis is incorrect too. Although Cochrane doesn't find much effect of reducing salt in people without hypertension, the article fails to point out that the effects of reduced salt were greater than the mean value in people with high blood pressure and that it is possible that reduced salt will allow more hypertensives to come off drugs and to maintain their blood pressure with a lower sodium diet. But basically they seem to conclude that there haven't been enough good quality, large, double-blind trials.
Correction: in Dahl's work, one of the diets was 11.6% "sea salt", which made the rats' (dry) pellets 7.3% sodium chloride. Also, they did not appear to know actually how much food - and therefore salt - that rats ate: "All animals had free access to food and water" (so did not look for an effect of salt content on the rats' total food/water intake etc.).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince salt is essential for animal life, it is hardly surprising that very low levels of it would be correlated with higher mortality, whether in an observational study or a RCT. The authors of the study in AJH admit that their analysis, thorough though it was, still had "insufficient power to exclude clinically important effects of reduced dietary salt on mortality or CVD morbidity" "despite collating more event data than previous systematic reviews of RCTs (665 deaths in some 6,250 participants)."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question that none of the studies appear to answer, or to have even tried to answer, is this: does there exist an optimum sodium level, or intake range? Is it conceivable that sodium intake higher than "low sodium" yet lower than the abominably high "normal" intake these days might reduce mortality?
A more comprehensive version of the AJH review is awaiting publication, but the preliminary online version is available at http://www.nature.com/ajh/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ajh2011115a.html.
Adulterating food by injecting sodium, into turkey for example, is criminal because, since it is an industry-wide practice, the choice is not eating it at all or eating something that has been so tampered with as to make it unhealthy. There is no way to remove the sodium once it has been added so it simply ruins vast quantities of food for the majority of the population. I for one would love to have a nanny state - at least nannies care about the well-being of the people they are charged with protecting...unlike our present crop of corporate politicians with all their monetary "free speech"... Being forced to eat high sodium foods for the benefit of corporate profits is not my idea of being a free person.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be true that the only truly effective way to decrease out intake of sodium will be via legislative regulations for our food supply....but we can all do something just as effective: eat lots of potassium-rich fruits and veg (like citrus, melons, bananas, and tomatoes).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring my short lifetime I have seen several food items go from friend to foe to friend again. For example drinking wine used to be bad for you, today a little wine is not only good for "the stomach's sake" it is recommended for the "heart" as well. Eggs used to be bad, so was milk and sugar, now public enemy number one is salt. Persons with power always seem to want to control anything that brings genuine pleasure. I am expecting to wake up any morning and hear that sleep, sex and cold showers on a warm day are not conducive to good health. I am also expecting to hear that for persons like me who live on an island and enjoy the beach, that swimming is absolute bad for one's health.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhatever happened to doing things in moderation. Whatever happened to moderation?
I have always been a "salt is bad for you" skeptic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have never let these dire warnings from 'experts' stop me from putting as much salt as I wished on my food.
I was sure that you could eat as much salt as you wanted w/o detriment, but I didn't know that it was even healthier to do so. This article informs so.
I believe the whole campaign against salt is based in puritanism - something that tastes so good it must be bad for you. And even if it isn't, all that enjoyment must be curtailed for morality's sake.
I am pleasantly surprised to see SciAm put this article out, as it has libertarian leanings; basically stop the government from telling us what to do with our personal choices.
Finally the world is coming round my stance on this matter, and I can tell all the busy-body food police I sometimes dine with, that they just don't know what they are talking about.
"I am pleasantly surprised to see SciAm put this article out, as it has libertarian leanings; basically stop the government from telling us what to do with our personal choices."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt has not been made illegal to ingest excess salt and this article is not advocating some kind of "libertarian" agenda.
If you think about it, rather than just exercising your right-wing reflexes, you would realise that insisting on a high-salt content in many foods impinges on the personal choices of those who desire to have a lower-than-"normal" salt intake. It's been found that lower salt levels can only be attained by governments forcing manufacturers to comply. Thus, a non-"libertarian" "nanny-state" increases total personal choice, as those who are foolish enough to do so can add extra salt to low salt foods, but it is not possible to remove it from high salt products.
Well, a lot of the traditional food that my family and I ate are pickled. Some dishes are swamped with soy sauce.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone seems to be doing okay. Eating sugary and fatty American food hasn't helped though.
For decades, a great many health professionals have asked the Secretary of HHS to run a large randomized controlled clinical trial to determine the impact of salt reduction on health. The anti-salt consumer activists, the Institute of Medicine and the CDC have all resisted this because they fear the possible result that salt reduction will not improve and may possibly damage health.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven the Institute of Medicine (which is highly biased on this issue) stated in its Report on “Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake” that we should drop the level of salt intake slowly, “in a stepwise fashion” and at EVERY STEP WE SHOULD CHECK FOR UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. Well, what is that all about? Cut everyone’s salt and then see what might go wrong? That’s what a clinical trial is supposed to do. The difference is that in a clinical trial, the number of participants is limited, they are all informed of the trial and they give their consent. If it were up to the food fascists in activist groups and public health agencies the whole population of 300 million Americans would be placed in a trial, without our knowledge or consent.
The recommended level of 2,300 mg sodium per day has NEVER been achieved by any large population in the world with the exception of two rainforest tribes that die before they reach 50 years. If anyone has a single peer-reviewed scientific publication showing any country with an average consumption of 2,300 mg sodium/day or below, they should reference it in these comments. Let us all know about it.
For those that constantly complain about the salt in processed foods, the solution is simple – don’t buy processed foods. Make your food from scratch, adding only the amount of salt you want – certainly anyone who believes so deeply in the issue would be willing to do so and teach the food industry a lesson.
This is not rocket science – companies make food to make profit (and they also happen to employ people, create the national economy and pay taxes, before they make that profit). You can’t make a profit by killing people, by making them sick or by giving them what they don’t want to eat (e.g. Campbell reduced salt soup). No?
It’s time to remove this whole issue out of the arena of rhetoric and place it back into science. Arguments, charisma, stereotyping and influence are nice, but they can’t trump Mother Nature. Our physiology answers to a much higher authority than all the assorted pundits.
We need a randomized controlled clinical trial on the impact of population-wide salt reduction on health.
OK, you lot who criticise "food fascists" who think factory-prepared food should have lower salt levels fail to recognise your own "fascism", which is that - by insisting on high salt levels in such food - you are denying those who want low levels the right to eat processed food? Where's the "anti-fascism" in that? As I have said before, at least if you want to load up your processed food with salt you can add it, while it is not possible to remove salt from high sodium foods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's a reference related to one you you asked for, a population (not a country) who have a very low salt intake: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/52/1/146.full.pdf+html
Here's another refereed paper showing whole populations with under 2300mg sodium daily intake and some only about 10% of that (page 424 of the pdf):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277953682900508
These researchers are morons:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Salt and sodium are not the same thing. The reason salt is bad for you is the Cl atoms, not the Na atoms. Chlorine is a toxin, which combined in its most basic form Cl2 is deadly chlorine gas exactly as used in World War I. So requiring sodium levels on the nutritional labels on foods is pretty much worthless. Also, the chlorine is dangerous not because of blood pressure or heart attacks, but actually because it damages cells at the molecular level and can lead to cancer/ carcinogenic effects.
2) There is a confounding factor in their claim that urine samples with more salt actually indicate lower risks of high blood pressure and lower risks of heart attacks -- FAT. That's right, foods from restaurants or frozen premade foods with high fat content also tend to have high salt content. Eating fat does not make you fat. On the contrary, if the fat is from fish, tree nuts, avocados, grass-fed or free-range animals, or otherwise high in Omega 3 fatty lipids, then eating fat and eating cholesterol actually helps reduce your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Watch the movie "Fat Head" for more info. So based on the urine tests in that article, I would assume that the "lower salt" test subjects are [confoundingly] also the lower-fat-eating test subjects, and that is why salt is spuriously assigned a false correlation.
TobyNSaunders, the word "designed" doesn't imply a higher power. Evolution has produced organisms that are well-designed for life on this planet. Are you arguing that a kidney is not designed to do the function that it does in the body?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a sort of intelligence that genes hold. It isn't the conscious type of intelligence that we commonly think of, but it is more of an encyclopedic knowledge of what organisms on our planet can be subjected to.
The author clearly has been paid-off by BIG SALT!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI dub thee a Sodium Denier!
Anecdotal evidence
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI followed the conventional heart-healthy advice for many years. In particular, I ate a low-fat diet, gave up frying entirely, exercised regularly and rarely used salt when I was cooking, mainly because my husband's family has heart disease.
During my second pregnancy, I discovered that getting a little fat in my lunch was absolutely necessary to keep me from falling asleep at my desk. My skin structure collapsed early, before menopause, probably due to the low-fat diet. My sister was overweight, but her skin stayed nice for much longer than mine.
During menopause, and under great stress, I developed early adrenal fatigue, which was being well treated by bio-identical hormone therapy, when I had an incident of temporary global amnesia (!). I have since discovered that my mental fog and exhaustion can be treated using sodium chloride.
The ONLY part of the conventional, heart-healthy advice that has worked consistently for me is the recommendation to do exercise. However, the exercise is mostly weightlifting, with a lesser emphasis on aerobics, and I have never met a medical doctor who understands the elements of an effective exercise program.
It's more about what *kind* of salt, than salt itself. Refined salt is suitable for chemical processes (as in factories), not for human consumption. Unrefined salt, such as celtic sea salt, reacts very positively in the human diet and is, in fact, necessary! It's the other stuff that causes our joints to swell, and the blood pressure to elevate, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTable salt is bad for you, not for blood pressure or anything, but because it is so heavily processed and is missing all of the other minerals normally present in sun dried crystal salts that you grate yourselves. Also, crystal salts have a much better flavour and do not contain additives such as lead. My favourite is Himalayan rock crystal salt, which contains about 88 minerals. In this way, we can actually move to further PREVENT heart disease since "full" unrefined salts will have magnesium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love studies like Dahl did, "proving" an excess of something is bad for you. Drink too much water and you will throw up or drown. Ergo, water is bad for you. At some point of excees, there isn't anything that isn't bad for you. The question I have is whether the food nannies will go with the change in science or frump about claiming the issue was "settled" decades ago. Is their campaign about them or about doing something positive?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly, the body needs some sodium. It doesn't get it out of thin air. It predominates in extracellular fluid. I presume we would be recycling natural salt if we ate animal blood as part of animals. Too little salt is unhealthy, especially for people who sweat a lot. If the body response to a low blood volume is to pump out more adrenaline, then it is feasible that too low salt causes high blood pressure. I have seen several patients where eating more salt lowers blood pressure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBottom line. Everybody needs some salt and hopefully our taste buds can help us to regulate intake and the kidneys will manage the homeostasis if we drink enough water. Salt dissolved in food is more likely to be tastable than salt crystals on chips.
LD5o for salt is 3g/kg for rats. It means feeding this dose of salt will kill the half of the rats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisANOTHER CONSIDERATION: SEVERLY LIMITIMG SALT POTENTIALLY LIMITS IODINE INTAKE WHICH MAY CONTRIBUTE TO THE WIDESPREAD NEED FOR THYRROID MEDICATION.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhether or not you believe that salt is good for you, here is one way to lower your sodium intake: omit the salt in the cooking process, and add it at the table. You get a much bigger bang for your buck, because the salt is on the outside of the food, where you can taste it right away--giving you the illusion that it's saltier than it really is. This works especially well with things like corn-on-the-cob, fried potatoes, and meat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJamseDavis says he gave up salt and started cooking with sea salt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAhem.
The salt-mines from which "ordinary" salt comes are dried up sea-beds.
So all salt you buy in the shops is sea salt.
The ancient seas had no modern pollutants in them so ordinary salt is a cleaner salt than salt taken from modern seas.
Read, digest and interpret the article before jumping on the "comments" bandwagon. There's none so blind as those who cannot see, or read. No one is arguing against any persons particular experience or observation regarding their, or a friends, use of salt. Nor really of past/current medical opinion. The article is simply a statement concerning relevant scientific studies and the results and observations, thereof. Just accept the observations for what they are and wait for the next revelation concerning coffee, margarine, soy, tobacco, whatever, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt can be argued that the use of expressions such as "the kidney was designed" is both valid and useful and derives naturally form the wider evolutionary model advanced in "The Goldilocks Effect" which is a free download in e-book formats from the Unusual Perspectives website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe salt issue reflects an inevitable problem with medicine as practiced today inasmuch as it is very often impractical to provide treatments (or recommendations) on other than a statistical basis rather than accounting for individual variations.
Largely as a result of sex, we all have different designs :>)
Att. researchers: The article gave the clues to look for - A person is a "salt fiend" (which was supposedly associated with heart problems and high blood pressure) not b/c of "salt" but rather b/c they lack a MINERAL(s) in their diet - and that is probably the source of both the hypertension and heart problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, I realized suddenly one day (I do like salt, but I limit it to taste) that I was using much more salt than normal. When I upped my mineral uptake - my craving for salt went away!
Good luck on the new direction of research!
It's virtually impossible to avoid salt, at least in America, because it's in most canned and packaged foods and it's in all fast foods and restaurant foods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I wonder about cited studies on people who reduce salt intake. Just eliminating the salt shaker wont do it.
Once when my diastolic blood pressure started creeping above 95 I made a heroic and successful attempt to eliminate salt from my diet and my diastolic blood pressure went back into the low 70s. So it worked for me. But I was also drinking too much at the time, which a doctor pointed out to me. So I quit drinking, begin eating normally again and my diastolic blood pressure has remained fair below 95 and usually in the 70s and 80s. I don't eat much processed or fast food and when I eat in restaurants I always notice a slight swelling in my fingers and hands. I found that I can drink about 400 ml of wine per day without a significant rise in blood pressure but not more.
Some people seem to be able to eat as much salt as they want to without a rise in blood pressure but others can't. Japan is an interesting epidemiological study which seems to prove that excessive salt is damaging to the body in various ways, including a rise in blood pressure.
I remember back in my college days, sitting around with
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisolder relatives. "I don't follow the latest advice, its
always wrong", was thinking to myself how silly they
where. Wrong.
The advice of the time was to avoid butter and use margerine, eat low salt, later on the low fat craze.
Guess what all of them wrong. The people who simply
ignored the advice of experts where better off.
When we hear the latest advice these days I now take it
with a grain of salt. Its always been wrong or atleast
over stated before. Why is it right now?
More recently the fanatical sun avoidance advice given
without warnings to take vitamin D to compensate.
Not listening to U.S. Senate’s Select Committee may be the single most important factor in one's health. Like a lot of other groups who seem to have an inordinate amount of interest in how you run your life, i.e. the one in power now, they shouldn't be trusted. What's the motive....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead the post above yours.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem isn't salt, it's salt in the modern American diet. Salt makes mediocre food palatable and, given the quantities that Americans are served in restaurants, encourages people to overeat. If I were a research institute, I'd look into the relationship between salt and fat, and salt and calories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe funny part is that there is more evidence linking salt to hypertension than there is linking fat and dietary cholesterol to heart disease. Care to run an article on that? The statistical correlations of fat intake to heart disease are so weak that they *just* make it into the realm of statistical significance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about the lack of support for Omega-3 fatty acids being good for you? The British Medical Journal debunked the notion that they do anything beneficial (http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7544/752.full). Any chance of covering that?
For those who want numbers on sodium (Na) in blood and the effect of lacking sodium and the symptoms see the following link:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ganfyd.org/index.php?title=Hyponatraemia
an historic overview of salt depletion studies:
http://www.rmoxham.freeserve.co.uk/salt%20starvation.htm
Death can happen within 30 days of too low sodium levels (under 125 mmmol/liter). the first symptoms are tiredness and lethargy, it start to get difficult to do normal physical chores. This situation gets worse as the envy to throw up especially after eating increases. The problem is that the body tries to adjust the levels of the others ions (magnesium, calcium and potassium) relative with sodium. In the end the body increase the fluid dejection to try to lower the others ions, which give vomiting and diahrrea. It can be confounded with a gastro-intestinal disease. If the sodium level is not corrected, death will follow.
People who lack sodium can die and quite fast too, especially during long exercises in hot weather, just look at marathon runners that fall down, not through lack of water but of lack of sodium in their blood, because it has been sweated out. there is even the published story on ABC news about a child that died of sodium depletion from running for over 3 hours as a punishment.
All armies in the world know of the bad effects of too low salt in a soldier diet and they have all supplied them with higher than usual salted food especially in hot weather or during war when exertion is at the highest.
There is no salt 'craving' signal that will appear for people with too low sodium, there is suddenly no envy to eat salty when your body is sending signals that it is lacking salt (se symptoms above), it is unlike water where you will be thirsty for lack of water in the body. Only a sodium analysis will tell you how low it really is.
This all to say, do not cut too much salt, your health depends on it.
In comment #76 you said: " I for one would love to have a nanny state ..." To paraphrase the brilliant Yoda: "... and that is why you fail."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink about it. You say this because you are convinced that this nanny state will agree with all of your positions. What if they did not? What if they labeled your positions on salt as anti-American and subversive to the American salt producers?
Impossible? Only because you believe that you are RIGHT and others who take an opposite position are WRONG. But what if...?
The utopian concept of the benign nanny state has yet to be achieved because those who have the "God Complex" (in that they alone have the ultimate truth & knowledge on their side) and who would seek to be in charge of us all are delusional in the worst ways - even if they are motivated by the best of intentions.
Unfortunately, science & scientific concensus of a moment in time is also no repository of ultimate truth. There was a time when bloodletting was the consensus treatment for many diseases and that the earth was the consensus center of the universe.
Too bad. I'd love to let someone else handle my life's problems but until you convince me that there is someone smart enough to be always "righter" than me in every aspect of my life, I'll reject the nanny state as a pretty bad idea.
IMHO
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?? YOU'RE RUINING THE NARRATIVE!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe purpose of "science" is to find evidence of dangers that the government must protect us from with draconian laws, regulations, taxes, etc etc. Facts and evidence are beside the point, have you learned nothing from the Global Warming gravy train?
How do you expect to get endless grants stolen from the taxpayers and laid at your feet if you claim something is NOT a danger? Sheesh, get with the program.
no, it wasn't food companies. The government is making them cut the salt for no good reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissalt is necessary to health. It controls fluid levels and spares the adrenal glands. All over the world, populations eat roughly the same amount of sodium across a huge spectrum of diets and cultures. This strongly suggests that a regulatory mechanism is built in and this is an appropriate level of intake. (around 3-4 gm of sodium daily) Lack of salt can be a huge issue especially in hot climates, and contributes to heat deaths and illness in the elderly. Low sodium causes weakness, dizziness, and even raises the risk of diabetes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not for or against salt... just confused about the data. As a student learning Medical Nutrition Therapy, I would really like to know what will be best to recommend to people. This article is convincing to not worry so much. Then I read a source I have confidence in, the Linus Pauling Institute take on salt: "The largest and most rigorously designed observational study of sodium and blood pressure was INTERSALT, which studied more than 10,000 men and women in 32 countries. Both cross-population and within-population analyses supported the same conclusions, that sodium intake, measured by 24-hour urine collections, was associated with blood pressure (27). Subsequent analyses that used more sophisticated statistical techniques made the relationships even stronger than previously reported (28).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe I'll stick to my general feeling about food - eat mostly fresh food, variety & moderation, and pay attention to how foods makes you feel.
All I can think of is how Gandhi lead his people down to the beach to gather salt after the British declared it a monopoly of the state.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt truly is time to end the war on salt. Read my blog post in response to a 2013 meta-analysis showing that moderate salt intake is nothing but good for you: http://thescienceofnutritiondotnet.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/salt-is-good-for-you-in-moderation/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks,
Dr. Willip