I thought it was established that the studies blaming sodium for cardiovascular issues were flawed and there was no clear connection, but this paper cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510971... which reaffirms that sodium is bad. Has there been any recent discourse on this conflict?
Edit 2: The paper I linked also claims humans got ~0.5g of salt for most of history (implying humans need very little salt). I'm skeptical of that too - early human civilization was near the ocean, and plenty of animals need much more salt. For instance, non-active horses need 25g of salt daily, which is bodyweight-equivalent to about 5g in humans, not 0.5g. Sheep are 9-11g salt (similar body weight to humans).
I have seen a few months ago some study, but I do not remember a link, whose results were that for elevated blood pressure an excess intake of sodium was much less important than an insufficient intake of potassium, correlated to the sodium intake.
EDIT:
I see that one of your links has the same topic with the more recent study that I had seen, i.e. the at least equal importance of the potassium intake.
Yeah, none of them even mention potassium in passing, which seemed odd for me for a paper more or less directly asserting that potassium isn't a (more) significant factor.
First of all, sodium chloride is now deprived of all its trace minerals and nutrients. "Table salt" is pure, translucent and uniformly white, which indicates it has been refined, all the nutrients and minerals removed: they are sold to supplement companies at a premium, because of how valuable they are!
We end up with comparatively worthless Table Salt. (Luke 14:34-35) Therefore, it is rightly vilified, because adding it back during cooking or serving is now pointless.
Also, high sodium levels correlate quite well with ultra-processed food and shelf-stable food. Since it's a preservative, sodium chloride (along with sodium benzoate, MSG, et. al.) is disproportionately added to frozen foods, prepared meals, and in food service, at takeout and restaurants.
Therefore, it's not sodium itself which is the villain here, but sodium content is a proxy and accurate predicter of really awful nutrition, so indeed, it's a good idea to avoid it in the first place.
I knew chinese food was salty by damn, 11g? Even on days when I consume waaaay to much salt (pigging out on smoked salmon, usually), I don’t generally get over 6g, and I still feel like shit. How is it possible for such a large population to consume so much sodium? Is it genetic, do they have some special adaption for it?
In the part of China I come from, pretty much all common flavor profiles are predominantly salty. This means that people are having salty stir fries, salty stews, salty soups, etc. Sugar&vinegar exists, but a lot less common than salty ones, and even in sugar&vinegar, it's common to add at least a good pinch of salt.
This is different from eating one really salty thing, like smoke salmon, where the saltiness is very pronounced. When salt is evenly distributed in every dish and meal, it's a lot less salient that you've consumed too much of it. It's a common experience when eating out, to not feel like I have had too much salt during the meal, but be very thirsty afterwards. (It's also why I dislike eating out back home, but sometimes it's inevitable)
So you probably do feel like shit, but its constant rather than something that you notice all the sudden after eating way too much salty food, and your body has probably adjusted to the elevated sodium levels over time, so the side effects are diminished (but, according to this paper, still has a significant effect on your heart health).
This is all telling me I should be options trading on biotech companies in China testing blood pressure medication!
Feeling like shit is stretching it; it's just being thirstier than if I'm cooking myself. I'd say if we do feel like a shit, the local culture probably wouldn't have grown so salty.
But health-wise, yeah, it would not be a good idea to eat out often. High blood pressure is a very, very salient health problem, on par with obesity in the public consciousness.
I fucking love salt, and have the blood pressure to go with it. I’ve been more careful about it lately, but I decided to splurge a little tonight at a party, probably in the 3-4 range and I am absolutely whiteknuckling it right now. I almost passed out just thinking about 11g.
American Heart Association says Americans on average have 3500mg sodium which is ~9g salt. I'd guess that's mostly from snacks and side dishes, plus salt used in less-recognizable ways during food production? If you have an upper outlier of 6g I'd say you have a fairly rare diet.
No, I made an error, since I didn't differentiate "salt" from sodium, of course since where I'm from sodium is generally what is labeled for daily intake and not chloride, even though the daily recommended is equimolar[0].
I’ve been prescribed medication for hypertension for years now. Thankfully the outcome has been a consistently well controlled and more-or-less normal range of blood pressure.
My spouse has put in a lot of work to help me get to a point where I’m not actively avoiding added salt or sodium. Where once the DASH diet and 150/90 made me really scared to season a dish, now I don’t shy away from reaching for the salt, or borderline starve myself of sodium.
The point that my spouse made was precisely yours: almost every meal we make is home made (and kudos to my spouse for being our de facto and a fantastic cook).
Worst thing about my trip to the US was how undersalted the food was. Seriously, salt is flavour! I assume it's some combination of the American obsession with salt as a cause of hypertension, and the belief that choice and customization is paramount, so people get to add exactly how much salt they do or do not want with the shakers.
Adding salt to food after it's cooked is, with some caveats, like adding sugar to tea after it's already iced, it ain't the same people.
I don't really know where this rant is going other than my general feeling that the medical establishment is constantly working to make food as unpalateable as possible, and is wrong about it 3/4 of the time anyway. We need to teach people to listen to their own bodies, not make one-size-fits-all pronouncements.
Speaking as an American: our commercially produced, restaurant, and fast foods all tend to be fairly high in sodium, but it doesn’t always taste salty.
Europeans might not consume healthier diets than Americans, but they move around a lot more, the portions are smaller, and the regulations on food are much tighter, so in the end they end up healthier. But, if you didn't walk much more than the distance between your bed and the toilet, and the toilet to your car, and your parking spot to your desk (or worse for WFH employees, just the trip around the supermarket), you, too, would probably be worse off for consuming the same amount of sodium day to day as the average Chinese person or European.
I thought it was established that the studies blaming sodium for cardiovascular issues were flawed and there was no clear connection, but this paper cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510971... which reaffirms that sodium is bad. Has there been any recent discourse on this conflict?
Edit: Just recently, two articles here saying sodium isn't really bad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41362798 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38400460
Edit 2: The paper I linked also claims humans got ~0.5g of salt for most of history (implying humans need very little salt). I'm skeptical of that too - early human civilization was near the ocean, and plenty of animals need much more salt. For instance, non-active horses need 25g of salt daily, which is bodyweight-equivalent to about 5g in humans, not 0.5g. Sheep are 9-11g salt (similar body weight to humans).
I have seen a few months ago some study, but I do not remember a link, whose results were that for elevated blood pressure an excess intake of sodium was much less important than an insufficient intake of potassium, correlated to the sodium intake.
EDIT: I see that one of your links has the same topic with the more recent study that I had seen, i.e. the at least equal importance of the potassium intake.
Yeah, none of them even mention potassium in passing, which seemed odd for me for a paper more or less directly asserting that potassium isn't a (more) significant factor.
First of all, sodium chloride is now deprived of all its trace minerals and nutrients. "Table salt" is pure, translucent and uniformly white, which indicates it has been refined, all the nutrients and minerals removed: they are sold to supplement companies at a premium, because of how valuable they are!
We end up with comparatively worthless Table Salt. (Luke 14:34-35) Therefore, it is rightly vilified, because adding it back during cooking or serving is now pointless.
Also, high sodium levels correlate quite well with ultra-processed food and shelf-stable food. Since it's a preservative, sodium chloride (along with sodium benzoate, MSG, et. al.) is disproportionately added to frozen foods, prepared meals, and in food service, at takeout and restaurants.
Therefore, it's not sodium itself which is the villain here, but sodium content is a proxy and accurate predicter of really awful nutrition, so indeed, it's a good idea to avoid it in the first place.
I knew chinese food was salty by damn, 11g? Even on days when I consume waaaay to much salt (pigging out on smoked salmon, usually), I don’t generally get over 6g, and I still feel like shit. How is it possible for such a large population to consume so much sodium? Is it genetic, do they have some special adaption for it?
In the part of China I come from, pretty much all common flavor profiles are predominantly salty. This means that people are having salty stir fries, salty stews, salty soups, etc. Sugar&vinegar exists, but a lot less common than salty ones, and even in sugar&vinegar, it's common to add at least a good pinch of salt.
This is different from eating one really salty thing, like smoke salmon, where the saltiness is very pronounced. When salt is evenly distributed in every dish and meal, it's a lot less salient that you've consumed too much of it. It's a common experience when eating out, to not feel like I have had too much salt during the meal, but be very thirsty afterwards. (It's also why I dislike eating out back home, but sometimes it's inevitable)
So you probably do feel like shit, but its constant rather than something that you notice all the sudden after eating way too much salty food, and your body has probably adjusted to the elevated sodium levels over time, so the side effects are diminished (but, according to this paper, still has a significant effect on your heart health).
This is all telling me I should be options trading on biotech companies in China testing blood pressure medication!
Feeling like shit is stretching it; it's just being thirstier than if I'm cooking myself. I'd say if we do feel like a shit, the local culture probably wouldn't have grown so salty.
But health-wise, yeah, it would not be a good idea to eat out often. High blood pressure is a very, very salient health problem, on par with obesity in the public consciousness.
I fucking love salt, and have the blood pressure to go with it. I’ve been more careful about it lately, but I decided to splurge a little tonight at a party, probably in the 3-4 range and I am absolutely whiteknuckling it right now. I almost passed out just thinking about 11g.
My random Internet friend, have you spoken with a doctor about this?
American Heart Association says Americans on average have 3500mg sodium which is ~9g salt. I'd guess that's mostly from snacks and side dishes, plus salt used in less-recognizable ways during food production? If you have an upper outlier of 6g I'd say you have a fairly rare diet.
No, I made an error, since I didn't differentiate "salt" from sodium, of course since where I'm from sodium is generally what is labeled for daily intake and not chloride, even though the daily recommended is equimolar[0].
[0]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7009052/
When you cook your own food, it is pretty normal to eat only 5 to 6 g of salt per day.
Only when you buy food made industrially it becomes very unlikely to reach a so low daily intake of salt.
I’ve been prescribed medication for hypertension for years now. Thankfully the outcome has been a consistently well controlled and more-or-less normal range of blood pressure.
My spouse has put in a lot of work to help me get to a point where I’m not actively avoiding added salt or sodium. Where once the DASH diet and 150/90 made me really scared to season a dish, now I don’t shy away from reaching for the salt, or borderline starve myself of sodium.
The point that my spouse made was precisely yours: almost every meal we make is home made (and kudos to my spouse for being our de facto and a fantastic cook).
I cannot imagine 10+ grams of salt a day.
Worst thing about my trip to the US was how undersalted the food was. Seriously, salt is flavour! I assume it's some combination of the American obsession with salt as a cause of hypertension, and the belief that choice and customization is paramount, so people get to add exactly how much salt they do or do not want with the shakers.
Adding salt to food after it's cooked is, with some caveats, like adding sugar to tea after it's already iced, it ain't the same people.
I don't really know where this rant is going other than my general feeling that the medical establishment is constantly working to make food as unpalateable as possible, and is wrong about it 3/4 of the time anyway. We need to teach people to listen to their own bodies, not make one-size-fits-all pronouncements.
Speaking as an American: our commercially produced, restaurant, and fast foods all tend to be fairly high in sodium, but it doesn’t always taste salty.
Europeans might not consume healthier diets than Americans, but they move around a lot more, the portions are smaller, and the regulations on food are much tighter, so in the end they end up healthier. But, if you didn't walk much more than the distance between your bed and the toilet, and the toilet to your car, and your parking spot to your desk (or worse for WFH employees, just the trip around the supermarket), you, too, would probably be worse off for consuming the same amount of sodium day to day as the average Chinese person or European.
You can't remove salt from food after you add it. You also can't argue with taste.