The research, led by the eminent Harvard researcher Walter Willett, re-analysed all studies between 1957 and 2003 that measured sodium levels in urine – a more accurate method than asking people what foods they ate.
Professor Willett said the finding that salt intake had not changed, while the prevalence of high blood pressure had risen, suggested the ”epidemic of obesity may be a more plausible determinant” of high blood pressure rates than salt.
His study, published yesterday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, joins an international survey released last year with similar findings.
The problem here is this lessens the chance of being able to carp when you spot someone dumping a ton of salt on everything they eat.
Salt will get you into a pickle.
“Did you know that in the 20th century they actually thought that salt was bad for you? Listen to the animals I say. The lion will sit down with the lamb to share the salt lick. – Good enough for them, good enough for me.” ~ Max Eilerson
You’ve got it backward. A proper diet is stirring a little food into your bowl of salt. Mmmmmm.
Salt isn’t bad for you? Impossible!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ITPTJzPv4J8
It’s as if you need salt to live or something…
Cholesterol is also needed for your vascular system.
But in moderation. Just with all things.
Now if you are going to sweat your ass off, salt is one of the best things you need. But if you sit in front of a computer all day with the AC on, don’t eat salt like you are going to run a marathon.
just like the ONLY people that should eat a grand slam at Dennys are people about to plow the south 80.
Cursor_
Yeah if my aunt Margaret had listened to the doctors she might still be with us instead of passing away and mere 98.
They said she ought to stop eating potatoes fried in hog lard and loss weight. She was short and fat all her life as were her brothers and sisters. Of course she was still mowing her own yard with a push mower at 93.
Of course her youngest brother did die in his 70s but then he smoked. The others all lived to 90 or so.
Her husband and his brothers were thin but they smoked and died in their sixties.
My thought is if you want to live to be old the most important thing is to pick the right parents and grandparents. If they are short lifers it’s going to be very hard to do much about it though keeping the blubber off and exercising will help.
Speaking as a member of the bullied medical profession, I always had my doubts about sodium being so bad for you. In treating patients, I had to toe the line and spout the company line but, secretly, I add salt to lots of food.
Personally, I think the kidneys can do a perfectly adequate job of getting rid of any excess. I think the correlation between hypertension and salt my lie more in the fact that the older you get the more your sense of taste is likely to decline.
But, I bet it takes the Am Heart Assoc a decade or more to start changing their dietary recommendations. We’ve known for ages that most of your cholesterol is manufactured by your body not consumed. Excuse me: I’m going to go fry an egg or three in some salted butter, season with salt and pepper and a dash of Tabasco and have lunch.
Where are the double blind studies on salt intake using pigs, mice, or apes? Or even volunteer human prisoners?
It is amusing how much in medicine/biology/who knows what else that can’t be tested is actually concomitant and not causal.
I did start putting salt back into my diet a few years ago. It does make so many things taste better. But so does pepper, garlic, onion, herb mix, etc. I’ve got a wall of spices I still haven’t gotten around to actually taste testing.
I take a meal I like and then slowly add a certain spice to it until I can really taste it and know what it does to a meal. So far, have only done that with garlic. There is no upper limit. I can wind up eating pure garlic. I don’t think that would happen with salt?
“bullied medical profession”? – – ha, ha. Good one.
I have high blood pressure, and those that do not are understandably confused about this. First of all, salt is a compound containing the element sodium. The issue is not simply about dusting your food with a few grains of salt, it’s about all of the sodium compounds, including salt, used in food today.
Sodium nitrate, sodium benzoate, monosodium glutomate, sodium sulfite, all contribute to sodium intake. I, and thousands of others, see a clear result when we carefully select foods with little or no added sodium compounds.
The real bummer is that this greatly limits eating out, and the choice of where to eat. I don’t think the government should legislate sodium content. I do however thing raising awareness, and encouraging the reduction of sodium products in food is a good thing.
#9 Joe M – Pardon the cavalier attitude in my previous post. I, of course, meant HEALTHY kidneys are well able to manage our excess sodium. If you’ve had hypertension for some time, then you undoubtedly have some decreased renal function. Then high sodium levels cause an osmotic gain in fluids into the circulation. More fluid = high pressure. I’m fortunate at my age that I do not have a high B/P though I could certainly lose a few pounds and grow some hair. (Not that hair has anything to do with blood pressure but as long as I’m wishing…)
And you are definitely right in reminding us that it is not the salt but the sodium in sodium chloride and that we can get sodium from many sources.
Here in SE Asia they consume a lot of sodium as salt and MSG but HTN (sorry – medicalese for hypertension) is not nearly the problem it is in the west. I’m looking at two adult men right now eating bowls of salty noodles. Bet neither one of them tops 150 pounds.
In the US we tell healthy patients to try and eat less than 2500 grams of sodium a day. That’s about the same as the salt in 2 1/2 Big Macs. I say eat the salt and skip the Big Macs.
hmm…
..must be a new high blood pressure medication hitting the market in need of some free advertising.
-s
ps..
I bet Cows are happy to hear they are no longer in danger of having their favorite salt lick replaced by NuSalt.
-s
Carbs are what make salt an issue. For every gram of carbs you take in, your body stores 4 grams of water. So in order to maintain homeostasis, it must also hang onto more salt.
So in reality its not salt but carbs (Primary), water (Secondary) and salt (Tertiary) acting in concert, raising BP.
Eat a diet very low in carbs, and without all the excess water retention, it doesn’t matter how much salt you take in, your body has these twin organs called kidneys, whose job is to maintain proper salinity. They will kick out any salt not needed.
This thread has become pretty good right here at the end. I constantly marvel at the complexity of the body. Things hardly ever act directly but rather “act” by being inhibited by some other chemical. Feedback loops. Synergy.
Its 2010 and we still don’t know the complex of things that cause/ameliorate hbp. Parts are known, but not the whole.
But in the end, the simple truth is known: eat whatever you can find, exercise, and we were all meant to die in our middle twenties.
Ain’t Darwin a bitch?
This raises so many questions in my mind, such as, do the kidneys expend energy to remove salt from the blood — that is, is urine more saline than the blood it was filtered from? And what about sweat? Is sweat more saline than urine? Could measurements of salt in urine be affected by the subject sweating a lot?
Still curious after all these years…