Nutrition NY Times Article - Salt in Food
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Halfakneecap
Level 6 Valued Member
I don’t eat many chocolate bars but the Snickers is king!
For other chocolate I like 70% dark. Not even really sweet, but it tastes like chocolate.
ali
Level 7 Valued Member
I get it....lots of processed food, salty high energy nutrient poor food, if hypertensive reduce your salt intake by eating low sodium processed food. Doesn't get to the root of the issue, if considering the public health problem of obesity. But what of hypertension?
My own recent personal experience....
Been fit and healthy all my life fortunately. Anytime I've had blood pressure taken it's always been 120/80 since as a kid, now 60.
I eat well, mostly home cooked. I cook a lot and add salt. Well aware that as I rarely eat processed meals I'm not concerned at all. However I do demolish packets of crisps...what in US parlance is potato chips....in a blink of an eye. Especially balsamic vinegar, nom nom. Hundreds of salty energy.
Had my blood pressure done recently to reveal high numbers, early stage hypertension. So I've quit the crisps, salt food less and bought a home use BP monitor. In 3 weeks I'm back to 178/75 on average.
As someone whose calories mostly come from good food, not overweight with regular exercise, I wrongly assumed to have a lot of wiggle room. Yet, even so, my situation was significant enough to put me at risk of hypertension.
It could be of course that I don't need that much salt, genetics and other lifestyle confounders but the overall evidence related to the general population suggests that excessive dietary salt is an issue.
A single intervention took off 25 beats from my systolic bp....as an intervention reducing salt is a simple measure. I could identify that source...too many crisps, too often...and pretty easy to forego them. For people who eat a lot of crap as their main source of food, that is an issue but even then that shouldn't diminish the risk factor of excess dietary salt.
It's difficult to parse out with any precision. Salt functions with defined parameters, dosage guidelines are just that. Normal health, some people may have lower or higher needs in a general population. The problem is that normal is skewed, the general population's salt intake is too high....obesity, hypertension to cv issues down the line. But, yeah I agree with the general eat less processed food will kill 2 birds with one stone...excess energy, excess salt...but when you dig down it is more nuanced and individualised.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Salt and the link to human health is well studied and a normal distribution indicates that the tails contain both high and low salty individuals for a given normal health population. When that distribution is skewed to the right, reducing salt would skew it back to normal, possibly, at least that's the goal.
Would that work? For all, for some or very few, if any? Public health interventions are aimed at the largest percentage of people who present with health concerns, not outliers or those that don't present with health concerns.
Most people could benefit from lower salt but not always, in other words.
My own recent personal experience....
Been fit and healthy all my life fortunately. Anytime I've had blood pressure taken it's always been 120/80 since as a kid, now 60.
I eat well, mostly home cooked. I cook a lot and add salt. Well aware that as I rarely eat processed meals I'm not concerned at all. However I do demolish packets of crisps...what in US parlance is potato chips....in a blink of an eye. Especially balsamic vinegar, nom nom. Hundreds of salty energy.
Had my blood pressure done recently to reveal high numbers, early stage hypertension. So I've quit the crisps, salt food less and bought a home use BP monitor. In 3 weeks I'm back to 178/75 on average.
As someone whose calories mostly come from good food, not overweight with regular exercise, I wrongly assumed to have a lot of wiggle room. Yet, even so, my situation was significant enough to put me at risk of hypertension.
It could be of course that I don't need that much salt, genetics and other lifestyle confounders but the overall evidence related to the general population suggests that excessive dietary salt is an issue.
A single intervention took off 25 beats from my systolic bp....as an intervention reducing salt is a simple measure. I could identify that source...too many crisps, too often...and pretty easy to forego them. For people who eat a lot of crap as their main source of food, that is an issue but even then that shouldn't diminish the risk factor of excess dietary salt.
It's difficult to parse out with any precision. Salt functions with defined parameters, dosage guidelines are just that. Normal health, some people may have lower or higher needs in a general population. The problem is that normal is skewed, the general population's salt intake is too high....obesity, hypertension to cv issues down the line. But, yeah I agree with the general eat less processed food will kill 2 birds with one stone...excess energy, excess salt...but when you dig down it is more nuanced and individualised.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Salt and the link to human health is well studied and a normal distribution indicates that the tails contain both high and low salty individuals for a given normal health population. When that distribution is skewed to the right, reducing salt would skew it back to normal, possibly, at least that's the goal.
Would that work? For all, for some or very few, if any? Public health interventions are aimed at the largest percentage of people who present with health concerns, not outliers or those that don't present with health concerns.
Most people could benefit from lower salt but not always, in other words.
@ali, I am not a doctor and this certainly isn't medical advice, but I'd have the health of your coronary arteries looked into as my next step.
I am a big fan of what they call a CT Scan for Coronary Calcium, a relatively inexpensive (about $100 here) test that, since arterial plaque is apparently largely composed of calcium, tells you about any buildup in your coronary arteries. Think of it this way - the same amount of fluid passing through a narrower tube will result in greater pressure. Put another way, both the volume of fluid and the diameter of the tube can both be causes of high blood pressure.
My personal history with this test, mentioned here on the forum before goes like this: My father had a heart attack when he was 46. At my annual physical exam when I was 46, I mentioned this to my doctor and he suggested the above-mentioned test, which was then a new thing and which my insurance covered because of my family history. I was very pleased to get the best possible score, a zero, which means no detectable buildup. I decided to take the test again 6 years ago, at age 63 - again a zero. My wife had it when she turned 65 - she got a 19, still a very good score.
-S-
I am a big fan of what they call a CT Scan for Coronary Calcium, a relatively inexpensive (about $100 here) test that, since arterial plaque is apparently largely composed of calcium, tells you about any buildup in your coronary arteries. Think of it this way - the same amount of fluid passing through a narrower tube will result in greater pressure. Put another way, both the volume of fluid and the diameter of the tube can both be causes of high blood pressure.
My personal history with this test, mentioned here on the forum before goes like this: My father had a heart attack when he was 46. At my annual physical exam when I was 46, I mentioned this to my doctor and he suggested the above-mentioned test, which was then a new thing and which my insurance covered because of my family history. I was very pleased to get the best possible score, a zero, which means no detectable buildup. I decided to take the test again 6 years ago, at age 63 - again a zero. My wife had it when she turned 65 - she got a 19, still a very good score.
-S-
Boris Bachmann
Level 8 Valued Member
We've had more than a few discussions here about salt and my position hasn't changed much - most of us (Americans) probably get more than enough in our crappy diets for the limited exercise and physical activity we do. Obviously, that can vary from person to person and from day to day.Direct link to my comment on the article:
Salt Is Hiding Everywhere. Can You Spot It?
Sodium lurks in surprising places. See if you can identify the biggest offenders with this quiz.www.nytimes.com
I feel like the salt discussion is kinda like the ice or heat debate, or the stretching is bad BS arguments - why the heck can't people grasp that there is nuance and demonizing (or blindly idolizing) a training supplement (and I'm using 'supplement' loosely here to talk about diet, accessory work, vitamins, etc) is freaking dumb...
Boris Bachmann
Level 8 Valued Member
When I think about how crappy my diet was in college, man, it's no wonder I bit it as an athlete...
When I saw a doctor once for stomach issues when I was in college, he just looked at me and said, "You need your mother to cook for you." He was right.
-S-
The point I tried to make in my comment is that blood pressure, what the article demonized salt for, isn't the main issue at all but rather it's being overweight, and eating too much prepared food, and not getting enough exercise. Prepared food has to have a lot of salt in it if anyone's going to find it tasty enough to buy more than once.
-S-
Boris Bachmann
Level 8 Valued Member
Yeah, I agree(d) w. your comments on the article and didn't mean that YOU didn't understand nuance - I was just speaking generally to the click-baity nature of such articles.
Halfakneecap
Level 6 Valued Member
I work with someone who dips each bite of KFC into salt. Every. Bite. I often imagine his insides are prosciutto. Got to his 50’s before the heart attack. Still going strong somehow.
On a positive note, you could say he isn't a fence sitter. The guy picks a direction and gets after it.
Adam R Mundorf
Level 6 Valued Member
You'll meet people like that who seem to do everything 'wrong' but just somehow, keep on going sometimes deep into old age.
HarryBergers
Level 6 Valued Member
There was an example I saw years ago of Japanese fisherman that eat north of 30g of salt per day and are perfectly healthy. Kidneys, barring any pathology generally(this word always implies exceptions!) can adapt to large amounts of sodium.
It's amazing how many people still follow/believe bad dietary advice from captured/compromised "health" associations/agencies.
Edit: I think I got a little too extra there.
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Denys Carthusian
Level 5 Valued Member
Denys Carthusian
Level 5 Valued Member
Denys Carthusian
Level 5 Valued Member
Denys Carthusian
Level 5 Valued Member
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From those people comes the expression, "The exception that proves the rule."
-S-
Ben Strong
Level 5 Valued Member
Your point about potassium is one I don't see often in this discussion. There are table salts available that are a mixture of Sodium Salt (NaCl) and Potassium Salt (KCl). Studies were done where the subjects simply swapped their regular table salt for these sodium/potassium combos when salting their food and had quite a remarkable improvement in blood pressures. Many people following a modern western diet (I know that's a debatable term in and of itself) are quite deficient in potassium in the first place so this can be a useful trick. Also the fact that you mentioned about potassium counteracting the sodium's effect.
These potassium/sodium salt combos are usually marketed as salt lite or lite salt. I use them myself with success in maintaining my blood pressure. I honestly can't taste a difference when adding it to home cooking so it's an easy swap.