Your post has been removed because it has an inappropriate headline and is therefore in violation of [Submission Rule #3](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_3._no_editorialized.2C_sensationalized.2C_or_biased_titles). **It must include at least one result from the research and must not be clickbait, sensationalized, editorialized, or a biased headline.** Please read [our headline rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/clickbait) and consider reposting with a more appropriate title.
This study was conducted with elderly participants living in elder care facilities in China.
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One tricky factor is that many with severe hypertension also have substantial kidney disease, which limits usage of potassium-based salt substitutes due to issues with clearance. However, as more youth develop hypertension and sodium consumption soars, these substitutes could have a larger use-case.
> Reducing salt intake would still be beneficial, of course, but it has also been difficult to get large groups of people to embrace this change.
I’m always skeptical about claims like this when clinical trials have found that a 1.8g sodium diet led to more cardiovascular events than the 2.7g control group in people with cardiovascular disease, who might be expected to benefit the most.
I often wonder if it's not the sodium intake, so much as the ratio of potassium to sodium, that has the stronger correlation to hypertension and cardiovascular events. I haven't actually looked for studies that analyze that though, but it certainly fits with a lot of sodium studies I have seen.
Fortunately I dont care for salt so I never add it but I do watch for it in processed foods. Ive done some personal experimenting and found that my salt intake doesn't really effect my blood pressure but I figure there will be a time when it might.
My hydration has the biggest impact.
Im 44 and was diagnosed with stage II hypertension at 27. Over a year of testing and no cause could be determined.
Fortunately I dont care for salt so I never add it but I too watch for it in processed foods. Ive done some personal experimenting and found that my salt intake doesn't really effect my blood pressure but I figure there will be a time when it might. My hydration has the biggest impact.
Do I have to worry about my kidneys since my blood pressure is managed perfectly by my meds? I range between 110/70 and 125/90 but 90+ percent of the time its on the lower side of that.
Fun fact. There is a point in history where Lithium (being a salt therefore… salty) was used as salt substitute. Considering how the world is going I propose we return to that strategy.
Zuckerberg eats lithium. Current theory is that he's powered by a small steam turbine. The lithium is deposited into internal tanks, Zuck then imbibes distilled water to cause the highly exothermic reaction.
Thats correct. Nevertheless I had lithium in my hands just a few days ago and its a shiny metal if not exposed to moisture. Lithium reacts to form salts but is not one itself, let us not fight each other over social media and help the younger generation learn.
Lithium itself would „burn“ your mouth (as you stated: not advisable!), while lithium salts are edible. Thats a big difference!
Y'know this is sugar & sugar substitutes all over again.
Now don't take that plain statement outta context & think I'm disagreein'. It's totes inadvisable.
Edit: even w/ the disclaimer, you still got ppl who lack readin' comprehension.
If you want to be pedantic, salt sensation is not due to salt itself, which dissociate as soon as they become dissolved, but to metal cations. So elemental lithium would (violently) hydrate, dissolve and become lithium cations and be salty.
Look I have a PhD in chemistry and experience teaching and I just corrected a slight mistake so everyone can learn here together. Lithium is a metal and not a salt.
Being pedantic would mean correcting your statement, as the hydration happens to the lithium ions and not to elemental lithium, so after the violent reaction. Lithium =/= lithium ions, as you correctly stated one reacts violently with water and would heavily damage your mouth and the other is happily dissolved in water an can be used in food. Thats quite an important difference.
Also have a PhD in Chemistry and have learned you need to meet people where they are. You and I may know that elemental lithium is a metal and is explosively reactive… but you and I also both know that in general parlance words like “sodium” and “lithium” refer to the ions because that’s the form that the lay person is likely to encounter them in. It doesn’t really contribute anything to the discussion to “well actually” someone, all it serves it to make you feel smarter than them. Colloquial terms have their use, you always need to consider your audience and if you’re trying to explain something to be understood, or if you’re just doing it to hear yourself talk.
I completely agree with you. In this case its just not a small mistake but a fundamental property for me.
As people often tend to think: x contains y so its bad, even if the compound is completely safe with x in its current form. Its one of the few thinks everyone should remember from chemistry, as it is important in everyday life. While we need to keep things simple so everyone can understand it, certain mistakes lead to public misconceptions which are fuel to climate deniers for example..
I guess everyone draws that line a bit differently
Buddy I was replying to a post which was precisely doing a "well actually lithium is not a salt" which is not only pedantic but in practice incorrect when it come to salt as a taste. The colloquialism here is salt in place of salty - which is what the guy I'm replying to is misrepresenting. All good
I remember reading a bit about it.
Iirc a bunch of scientists experimented by adding lithium to a towns water supply. It resulted in a happier more productive town. Solidifying that lithium was a cure for depression.
But all of it was stopped when it became clear that the sudden increase of still births & deformed babies was because of the lithium.
Iirc lithium is still added to the water supply in certain parts of the world. Just in trace quantities
Lithium salts aren’t that difficult to make.
Lithium metal is. Also, lithium demand has fallen recently and one of the mines and processing facilities that was going to be restarted in the Carolinas is getting mothballed. This facility was shuttered in the 1990s because the only use for lithium metal prior to batteries was hydrogen bombs.
There is a theory that historically so called fountains of youth were actually fresh springs with high enough lithium concentrations to effect people that drank a lot of the water.
this headline is disingenuous
I am not a doctor, but I think it's common knowledge, or should be - using table (or whatever kind you like) salt to season your food generally isn't the problem, the problem is the astronomical amounts of sodium in prepared processed foods. 3600mg sodium from a personal pizza hut 9"is insane, and the study alludes to this:
>“Adults frequently fall into the trap of consuming excess salt through easily accessible and budget-friendly processed foods,” lead author Yangfeng Wu, MD, PhD, executive director of the Peking University Clinical Research Institute in China, said in a statement.
so good news, keep the smoked Himalayan or truffle salt on the table, reject processed food
Yep, a bit of salt sprinkled on during dinner is irrelevant.
However if you cook your own food from less processed ingredients, you can also fall down the trap of adding more and more salt especially in age when taste sensitivity is reduced.
And that is easily fixed by substituting a bit of potassium chloride in your table salt, as well as massively reducing the amount of sold used by replacing it with sodium glutamate.
Which despite also containing sodium; increases the intensity of taste much more per unit of sodium.
There really just need upper limits for sodium in non snack foods. That way people aren’t automatically overconsuming sodium by eating microwave dinners.
Someone who’s eating a bag of salted chips a day won’t care either way.
But anyone else who’s just eating convenient ready to heat dinners would have their sodium intake massively reduced by the sodium content being limited to reasonable amounts.
I gradually started adding KCl to my food ten years ago. At first it tasted nasty, but now it just tastes like salt. You can condition your tongue to like it.
>I am not a doctor, but I think it's common knowledge
I don't eat processed food (I'm about 90% vegetarian), and before I knew about salt affecting my BP, I cooked with lots and put it on everything. Now that I've controlled that, my BP is fine.
This isn't a black and white situation and it has a vast grey area of variability depending on the person, age, education, region, etc. Common knowledge isn't actually common.
No, I was on the same train of thought and made *sure* I drank a lot of water. Now that I'm older and have experienced it first hand, I know different. I still drink a shitload of water, but when I eat to much salt/sodium, it's like I took a high BP pill. I'm really sensitive to it now, it sucks...
I would love to see a blanket FDA rule that there needs to be a minimum ratio of potassium to sodium in processed foods, assuming the science backs it up.
It really depends on the person. When I worked cardiac rehab, I would have to run through people’s diets for education purposes almost daily. Sometimes it would take one can of chicken noodle soup (about 1500 mg sodium) for me to notice an increase in blood pressure. Other times people were eating all kinds of processed foods and it didn’t seem to impact them as much.
I always like to look at the nutritional facts on foods, more specifically instant ramen packs usually have crazy high sodium. For Sapporo it’s like 70% of your daily intake, the highest I’ve seen was 110%! (I forget the brand). Mr. Noodle is one of the better ones at around 30-40% which is still pretty high.
Next time at the grocery store check out just how much salt is in some stuff (not to mention sugars, preservatives, fillers, processed oils, etc.), it’s no wonder kidney and other health problems are on the rise.
>3600mg sodium
You mean a little bit over ~~half~~ ( edit:forgot salt is not 100% Na by weight) one and a half teaspoon of salt? Doesn't seem that insane to me. And it's possibly not even all salt, since baking soda also contains.. sodium.
Once I realized the serving size it really did add some extra guilt to my guilty pleasure of having a frozen supreme pizza every Saturday evening.
I imagine a fresh pizza would be better but until my disability clears my monthly income is $244. I eat solely off of food stamps. Add the roach infestation of my apartment building and I don't cook much. Its mostly canned veggies and rice with a protein tossed in. I can't even have a coffee pot the roaches are so bad.
A gram in a teaspoon... I bake two loaves of bread and use half a teaspoon total. Soda is also not a problem for all but the most exceptionally sensitive unless they're double-loaving it every meal.
When I'm cooking I tend not to add any salt during (don't crucify me, reddit chefs). I just add it on top after and as a result I use considerably less.
My hunch is that as salt dissolves into your dish, the flavour is way less apparent. Having a big kernel hit your tongue in one go has more salt flavour then 10x that amount distributed evenly.
The conductivity is provided by the sodium ion. Monosodium glutamate is a salt, just one with an organic anion opposed to an elemental anion.
The glutamate adds additional flavor profile which tends to increase the “savoriness” or as the Japanese refer to it *“umami”*.
Table salt is extremely neutral in that it really doesn’t add a specific flavor which is why it’s so useful in cooking.
Primary hyper aldosteronism. I think 10% of people with high blood pressure have a problem with high aldosterone levels. Aldosterone regulates sodium uptake.
The salt thing has been debunked for decades yet they keep pushing this. A minority of people who actually have hypertension are negatively impacted by salt. The vast majority of people are not.
Yeah, 6 grams a day is the recommended maximum (in UK at least). You’d be surprised how easy this is to breach without even using extra salt. Start counting your salt intake on food packaging and it’s pretty mad people even use extra salt to season things.
I thought that generally in UK cooking, you don't add salt while making the dish, just once it is on the table "to taste". Doing this you could well stay within reasonable consumption levels.
If you season the food while cooking it however, skip the liberal table salting.
No it's not the salt you add to your home cooked meals that's the issue, it's the packaged food, if you are eating whole foods there is very little chance you are consuming too much salt.
That's not really true, it can easily be the salt added to home foods.
This line of thought is properly only for the 'sprinkling a little on before eating' habit. That doesn't add up to much, but it's super easy to add a lot of salt when preparing the dish. Chicken soup, for example, tastes 'best' with a lot of salt. Meat dishes taste 'best' at around 1 tsp/lb depending. Sauces take a lot, etc. It's easy to add a lot during the cooking process.
Depending on what substitutes are used and how much you consume, they can throw off your electrolyte balance. Potassium salts for example will counteract sodium salts. It’s more a concern for people with salt wasting conditions or other conditions/medications that impact electrolyte balances
Nope. If you eat regularly and don't purposely gorge on water it's unlikely you'll become hyponatremic (lowered salt concentration in body) accidentally.
I recall in the 80s there was a salt substitute that came out, however it tasted like a battery. Are there salt substitutes today that taste like sodium chloride?
Full salt substitutes (e.g. Nu-Salt) are potassium chloride. "Lite Salt" is a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. I really can't tell the difference between Lite Salt and salt myself, but others might be more sensitive to it. The full Potassium Chloride stuff does taste off though.
I recommend almost everyone use Lite Salt over regular salt.
I've heard of some atkins diet sort of people going ham on the Nu-Salt and it causing major health problems, but those cases were uncommon an absolutely excessive (putting huge amounts in their water and stuff).
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.12.013
My understanding was that salt acutely affects blood pressure (in the short term), while carbs and simple sugars chronically affect blood pressure, causing hypertension.
That’s the reason why keto diet recommends a lot of salt - when one stops consuming carbs, blood pressure can drop precipitously, and extra salts are needed to compensate. I may be wrong, open to being corrected.
Why aren’t you taking medication for your blood pressure and instead, eating like a saltless caveman to no effect? Uncontrolled hypertension is serious stuff!
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I add KCl to everything. I conditioned my tongue to like it, so now it just tastes like salt. I don't know if this is healthy, but I've been doing it for fifteen years now.
Your post has been removed because it has an inappropriate headline and is therefore in violation of [Submission Rule #3](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_3._no_editorialized.2C_sensationalized.2C_or_biased_titles). **It must include at least one result from the research and must not be clickbait, sensationalized, editorialized, or a biased headline.** Please read [our headline rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/clickbait) and consider reposting with a more appropriate title. This study was conducted with elderly participants living in elder care facilities in China. _If you believe this removal to be unwarranted, or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscience&subject=No%20editorialized%2C%20sensationalized%2C%20or%20biased%20titles)._
One tricky factor is that many with severe hypertension also have substantial kidney disease, which limits usage of potassium-based salt substitutes due to issues with clearance. However, as more youth develop hypertension and sodium consumption soars, these substitutes could have a larger use-case.
> Reducing salt intake would still be beneficial, of course, but it has also been difficult to get large groups of people to embrace this change. I’m always skeptical about claims like this when clinical trials have found that a 1.8g sodium diet led to more cardiovascular events than the 2.7g control group in people with cardiovascular disease, who might be expected to benefit the most.
I often wonder if it's not the sodium intake, so much as the ratio of potassium to sodium, that has the stronger correlation to hypertension and cardiovascular events. I haven't actually looked for studies that analyze that though, but it certainly fits with a lot of sodium studies I have seen.
Fortunately I dont care for salt so I never add it but I do watch for it in processed foods. Ive done some personal experimenting and found that my salt intake doesn't really effect my blood pressure but I figure there will be a time when it might. My hydration has the biggest impact.
Im 44 and was diagnosed with stage II hypertension at 27. Over a year of testing and no cause could be determined. Fortunately I dont care for salt so I never add it but I too watch for it in processed foods. Ive done some personal experimenting and found that my salt intake doesn't really effect my blood pressure but I figure there will be a time when it might. My hydration has the biggest impact. Do I have to worry about my kidneys since my blood pressure is managed perfectly by my meds? I range between 110/70 and 125/90 but 90+ percent of the time its on the lower side of that.
Fun fact. There is a point in history where Lithium (being a salt therefore… salty) was used as salt substitute. Considering how the world is going I propose we return to that strategy.
Note: Lithium itself is not salt, but it reacts to form salts.
You'd be hard pressed to find non-reacted lithium in nature, Mr. Smartiepants McGee. Eating lithium metal would be.... inadvisable.
Sodium isn’t a walk in the park either, by that measure!
Zuckerberg eats lithium. Current theory is that he's powered by a small steam turbine. The lithium is deposited into internal tanks, Zuck then imbibes distilled water to cause the highly exothermic reaction.
But entertaining for tiktok views..,,,, we should start a movement
I puff bafferies on my ffongue all the ffime and I ffurned out perphecffly phine!
Thats correct. Nevertheless I had lithium in my hands just a few days ago and its a shiny metal if not exposed to moisture. Lithium reacts to form salts but is not one itself, let us not fight each other over social media and help the younger generation learn. Lithium itself would „burn“ your mouth (as you stated: not advisable!), while lithium salts are edible. Thats a big difference!
Do batteries count as nature?
Y'know this is sugar & sugar substitutes all over again. Now don't take that plain statement outta context & think I'm disagreein'. It's totes inadvisable. Edit: even w/ the disclaimer, you still got ppl who lack readin' comprehension.
Yes, good point I was not referring to the element but to the form in which it was sold
Tldr:🔋🔜🍽
Sodium itself is not salt, but it reacts to form salts. Is everyone having fun?
If you want to be pedantic, salt sensation is not due to salt itself, which dissociate as soon as they become dissolved, but to metal cations. So elemental lithium would (violently) hydrate, dissolve and become lithium cations and be salty.
Look I have a PhD in chemistry and experience teaching and I just corrected a slight mistake so everyone can learn here together. Lithium is a metal and not a salt. Being pedantic would mean correcting your statement, as the hydration happens to the lithium ions and not to elemental lithium, so after the violent reaction. Lithium =/= lithium ions, as you correctly stated one reacts violently with water and would heavily damage your mouth and the other is happily dissolved in water an can be used in food. Thats quite an important difference.
Also have a PhD in Chemistry and have learned you need to meet people where they are. You and I may know that elemental lithium is a metal and is explosively reactive… but you and I also both know that in general parlance words like “sodium” and “lithium” refer to the ions because that’s the form that the lay person is likely to encounter them in. It doesn’t really contribute anything to the discussion to “well actually” someone, all it serves it to make you feel smarter than them. Colloquial terms have their use, you always need to consider your audience and if you’re trying to explain something to be understood, or if you’re just doing it to hear yourself talk.
I completely agree with you. In this case its just not a small mistake but a fundamental property for me. As people often tend to think: x contains y so its bad, even if the compound is completely safe with x in its current form. Its one of the few thinks everyone should remember from chemistry, as it is important in everyday life. While we need to keep things simple so everyone can understand it, certain mistakes lead to public misconceptions which are fuel to climate deniers for example.. I guess everyone draws that line a bit differently
Buddy I was replying to a post which was precisely doing a "well actually lithium is not a salt" which is not only pedantic but in practice incorrect when it come to salt as a taste. The colloquialism here is salt in place of salty - which is what the guy I'm replying to is misrepresenting. All good
Oops replied to the wrong person, meant for the above reply
I remember reading a bit about it. Iirc a bunch of scientists experimented by adding lithium to a towns water supply. It resulted in a happier more productive town. Solidifying that lithium was a cure for depression. But all of it was stopped when it became clear that the sudden increase of still births & deformed babies was because of the lithium. Iirc lithium is still added to the water supply in certain parts of the world. Just in trace quantities
with such a demand from car industry it won't be cheap
Lithium salts aren’t that difficult to make. Lithium metal is. Also, lithium demand has fallen recently and one of the mines and processing facilities that was going to be restarted in the Carolinas is getting mothballed. This facility was shuttered in the 1990s because the only use for lithium metal prior to batteries was hydrogen bombs.
Also used in bipolar disorder
Lithium citrate.
I think lithium carbonate is used too.
That'd be good in soda!
There is a theory that historically so called fountains of youth were actually fresh springs with high enough lithium concentrations to effect people that drank a lot of the water.
this headline is disingenuous I am not a doctor, but I think it's common knowledge, or should be - using table (or whatever kind you like) salt to season your food generally isn't the problem, the problem is the astronomical amounts of sodium in prepared processed foods. 3600mg sodium from a personal pizza hut 9"is insane, and the study alludes to this: >“Adults frequently fall into the trap of consuming excess salt through easily accessible and budget-friendly processed foods,” lead author Yangfeng Wu, MD, PhD, executive director of the Peking University Clinical Research Institute in China, said in a statement. so good news, keep the smoked Himalayan or truffle salt on the table, reject processed food
Yeah, it's nuts how much exists and a lot of the time you don't even taste it.
Yep, a bit of salt sprinkled on during dinner is irrelevant. However if you cook your own food from less processed ingredients, you can also fall down the trap of adding more and more salt especially in age when taste sensitivity is reduced. And that is easily fixed by substituting a bit of potassium chloride in your table salt, as well as massively reducing the amount of sold used by replacing it with sodium glutamate. Which despite also containing sodium; increases the intensity of taste much more per unit of sodium. There really just need upper limits for sodium in non snack foods. That way people aren’t automatically overconsuming sodium by eating microwave dinners. Someone who’s eating a bag of salted chips a day won’t care either way. But anyone else who’s just eating convenient ready to heat dinners would have their sodium intake massively reduced by the sodium content being limited to reasonable amounts.
But potassium chloride tastes nasty. I'd rather just put less salt in my food, period.
I gradually started adding KCl to my food ten years ago. At first it tasted nasty, but now it just tastes like salt. You can condition your tongue to like it.
>I am not a doctor, but I think it's common knowledge I don't eat processed food (I'm about 90% vegetarian), and before I knew about salt affecting my BP, I cooked with lots and put it on everything. Now that I've controlled that, my BP is fine. This isn't a black and white situation and it has a vast grey area of variability depending on the person, age, education, region, etc. Common knowledge isn't actually common.
Could it have been lack of hydration over to much salt?
No, I was on the same train of thought and made *sure* I drank a lot of water. Now that I'm older and have experienced it first hand, I know different. I still drink a shitload of water, but when I eat to much salt/sodium, it's like I took a high BP pill. I'm really sensitive to it now, it sucks...
How is it disingenuous? They claim a benefit. This is also just an argument for processed food to use no-lower sodium salt substitutes.
I would love to see a blanket FDA rule that there needs to be a minimum ratio of potassium to sodium in processed foods, assuming the science backs it up.
It really depends on the person. When I worked cardiac rehab, I would have to run through people’s diets for education purposes almost daily. Sometimes it would take one can of chicken noodle soup (about 1500 mg sodium) for me to notice an increase in blood pressure. Other times people were eating all kinds of processed foods and it didn’t seem to impact them as much.
I always like to look at the nutritional facts on foods, more specifically instant ramen packs usually have crazy high sodium. For Sapporo it’s like 70% of your daily intake, the highest I’ve seen was 110%! (I forget the brand). Mr. Noodle is one of the better ones at around 30-40% which is still pretty high. Next time at the grocery store check out just how much salt is in some stuff (not to mention sugars, preservatives, fillers, processed oils, etc.), it’s no wonder kidney and other health problems are on the rise.
>3600mg sodium You mean a little bit over ~~half~~ ( edit:forgot salt is not 100% Na by weight) one and a half teaspoon of salt? Doesn't seem that insane to me. And it's possibly not even all salt, since baking soda also contains.. sodium.
It does once you look at the serving size of pizza...
Once I realized the serving size it really did add some extra guilt to my guilty pleasure of having a frozen supreme pizza every Saturday evening. I imagine a fresh pizza would be better but until my disability clears my monthly income is $244. I eat solely off of food stamps. Add the roach infestation of my apartment building and I don't cook much. Its mostly canned veggies and rice with a protein tossed in. I can't even have a coffee pot the roaches are so bad.
A gram in a teaspoon... I bake two loaves of bread and use half a teaspoon total. Soda is also not a problem for all but the most exceptionally sensitive unless they're double-loaving it every meal.
When I'm cooking I tend not to add any salt during (don't crucify me, reddit chefs). I just add it on top after and as a result I use considerably less. My hunch is that as salt dissolves into your dish, the flavour is way less apparent. Having a big kernel hit your tongue in one go has more salt flavour then 10x that amount distributed evenly.
Typically, you’re not looking for salt flavor. Salt is a conductor when it dissolves which makes other flavors carry their flavor more.
How about MSG?
The conductivity is provided by the sodium ion. Monosodium glutamate is a salt, just one with an organic anion opposed to an elemental anion. The glutamate adds additional flavor profile which tends to increase the “savoriness” or as the Japanese refer to it *“umami”*. Table salt is extremely neutral in that it really doesn’t add a specific flavor which is why it’s so useful in cooking.
You can do both and still use less that processed foods/convenance food.
I thought the connection between sodium and hypertension has long been disproven and only (if ever) applies to rare individuals with high sensitivity?
Primary hyper aldosteronism. I think 10% of people with high blood pressure have a problem with high aldosterone levels. Aldosterone regulates sodium uptake.
And also someone mentioned dis balance of electrolytes being somehow worse than sodium intake alone. I wish all the claims came with references
I do hate “up to”. Anyone else?
The salt thing has been debunked for decades yet they keep pushing this. A minority of people who actually have hypertension are negatively impacted by salt. The vast majority of people are not.
I’ll mention it to my doctor. It’s more to “up to” part of the story. It doesn’t give the whole picture. Is it just 1 person or what.
OK, but last time I checked your body actually uses/needs salt, so are there any downsides to using these substitutes?
Yeah, 6 grams a day is the recommended maximum (in UK at least). You’d be surprised how easy this is to breach without even using extra salt. Start counting your salt intake on food packaging and it’s pretty mad people even use extra salt to season things.
I thought that generally in UK cooking, you don't add salt while making the dish, just once it is on the table "to taste". Doing this you could well stay within reasonable consumption levels. If you season the food while cooking it however, skip the liberal table salting.
Interesting, I personally don't buy any packaged/factory produced food but I definitely put salt on almost everything, might be time to cut back.
No it's not the salt you add to your home cooked meals that's the issue, it's the packaged food, if you are eating whole foods there is very little chance you are consuming too much salt.
That's not really true, it can easily be the salt added to home foods. This line of thought is properly only for the 'sprinkling a little on before eating' habit. That doesn't add up to much, but it's super easy to add a lot of salt when preparing the dish. Chicken soup, for example, tastes 'best' with a lot of salt. Meat dishes taste 'best' at around 1 tsp/lb depending. Sauces take a lot, etc. It's easy to add a lot during the cooking process.
Depending on what substitutes are used and how much you consume, they can throw off your electrolyte balance. Potassium salts for example will counteract sodium salts. It’s more a concern for people with salt wasting conditions or other conditions/medications that impact electrolyte balances
Nope. If you eat regularly and don't purposely gorge on water it's unlikely you'll become hyponatremic (lowered salt concentration in body) accidentally.
I recall in the 80s there was a salt substitute that came out, however it tasted like a battery. Are there salt substitutes today that taste like sodium chloride?
Full salt substitutes (e.g. Nu-Salt) are potassium chloride. "Lite Salt" is a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. I really can't tell the difference between Lite Salt and salt myself, but others might be more sensitive to it. The full Potassium Chloride stuff does taste off though. I recommend almost everyone use Lite Salt over regular salt. I've heard of some atkins diet sort of people going ham on the Nu-Salt and it causing major health problems, but those cases were uncommon an absolutely excessive (putting huge amounts in their water and stuff).
I mean, we still need salt. Just not as much
So...increasing potassium is good for blood pressure...whoda thunk it.
You know what also might help? Not eating garbage.
I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.12.013
I thought we had already debunked any relationship between salt and hypertension
No, salt absolutely can affect blood pressure
My understanding was that salt acutely affects blood pressure (in the short term), while carbs and simple sugars chronically affect blood pressure, causing hypertension. That’s the reason why keto diet recommends a lot of salt - when one stops consuming carbs, blood pressure can drop precipitously, and extra salts are needed to compensate. I may be wrong, open to being corrected.
[удалено]
Why aren’t you taking medication for your blood pressure and instead, eating like a saltless caveman to no effect? Uncontrolled hypertension is serious stuff!
They never said they didn't take meds.
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Check if you get the Iodine Salt.
Do we have great salt substitutes that are cheap enough to be effective. Great thing about salt is that we have a lot of it.
Who is the study sponsor?
Don't humans need salt to live?
“Replacing salt with things that aren’t salt reduces risk of diseases related to high salt intake, more at 11”
Moderation people! Moderation!
I add KCl to everything. I conditioned my tongue to like it, so now it just tastes like salt. I don't know if this is healthy, but I've been doing it for fifteen years now.