Salt: Much maligned..needed more then most people know

[Justforfun000]

Very interesting...anyone familiar with this site? It looks like it has good credibility in general:


http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/200 ... althy.html

June 26, 2008
Traffic tickets for salt — Does healthy eating mean low-salt?

Salt makes food taste good. Therefore, it must be bad for us. Enjoying food means people might eat too much and get fat.

Believe it or not, that is the logic behind beliefs that everyone — from children to adults — should reduce their salt intake as an important part of ‘healthy’ eating.

Fears of salt have become so widespread, even little kids are being told it’s bad for them and given low-salt diets. Even a lot of adults believe that lowering their salt intake will prevent high blood pressure and heart disease. But salt is another food ingredient where the science and the voices of medical experts have had a hard time breaking through myths, fears and pop ideologies.

What may seem inconceivable, given the Red Lights being given to salt, is that there is no credible evidence low-salt diets can help prevent heart disease, high blood pressure or premature death. Nor is there any sound evidence to support fears that we’re eating too much salt and that high salt diets increase our risks for cardiovascular disease and deaths. Nor can we assume that putting everyone on low-salt diets “can’t hurt” and are benign. In fact, the medical research suggests the very opposite.


From the stack

From the stack of studies that didn’t receive much media attention, comes a recent detailed analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), trying to sort out the relationships between our sodium intakes and cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. As JFS readers know, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, under the Department of Health and Human Services, have gathered clinical information on representative samples of U.S. adults for decades. They provide what is viewed by healthcare professionals as the most accurate data on our diets, lifestyles and health. Since these are paid for by your tax dollars and the information is supposed to be used to help guide public health policies, you deserve to know the results.

This study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, is the third in a series of examinations of NHANES data evaluating the effects of our sodium intakes on cardiovascular disease, blood pressure and deaths. It is also the most detailed to date by these investigators — none of whom have ever received financial reimbursements by any entity associated with salt. Researchers at the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, used the dietary assessments and detailed health exams from NHANES III (which ran from 1988 – 1994), representing 99 million non-institutionalized U.S. adults. They then followed these adults through the year 2000, using vital statistics on deaths and causes of death from the National Death Index.

To rule out possibilities that the results could reflect the affects of cancers or illnesses, the authors excluded those Americans who’d died within the first 6 months; those who’d had a previous heart attack, stroke or heart failure; and the outliers with extreme intakes of calories or salt. [If someone is eating fewer than 500 calories a day, something else is going on!] So, those put on low-salt diets for medical problems were excluded (16%) because their medical conditions could account for why they might be at greater risk for dying prematurely.

Average sodium intake among Americans was about 3,200 mg/day. To identify the effects of higher and lower intakes, the researchers divided salt intakes into quartiles. The raw data showed that those in the lowest quartile (average 1,500 mg/day) were more likely to be older, not smoke, be normal weight and have higher systolic blood pressures. The highest sodium quartile group (average sodium 5,500 mg/day) was more likely to be men, heavier, smoke and have higher diastolic blood pressures. Over about 9 years of follow-up, there were more deaths among those eating the lower amounts of salt.

Heart disease, high blood pressure and deaths were inversely related to salt intakes: the higher the sodium, the lower the risks; the lower the dietary salt, the higher the risks.

As with all observational studies, correlations cannot provide evidence of a cause, but the authors did their best to rule out potential factors that could account for these correlations.

So, to parse out the effects of dietary sodium intake itself, they factored for confounding influences, including: age, gender, race, education, added table salt, exercise, alcohol use, smoking, history of diabetes, history of cancer, systolic BP, cholesterol, dietary potassium, weight, treatment for hypertension, and calories. The associations between low-salt diets and higher rates of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality held.

The lowest sodium intakes — the 1500 mg/day amount some are saying we should all be eating — were associated with an 80% higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared with those consuming the highest salt diets. The lowest salt intakes were associated with a 24% higher risk of all-cause mortality. While these correlations aren’t tenable for these types of population studies, they clearly show that low-salt diets don’t reduce risks. The findings also show no increased risks associated with those among us eating the highest sodium diets.

Try as they might, these researchers were unable to show that among the general population, low-salt diets are associated with lower risks for developing cardiovascular disease or high blood pressure or premature death.

Try as they might, they were unable to show that the highest salt intakes among Americans are associated with higher risks for developing cardiovascular disease or high blood pressure or premature death. They even did a secondary analysis among just fat adults, adjusting for age, gender and calories, and still found no statistically significant correlations between salt intake and mortality.


Are our salt fears real?

Is there any support that we should worry that we or our children are currently eating too much salt? And is there any support for beliefs that the general population could benefit from public health recommendations to trim the salt in their diets in order to lower risks for developing cardiovascular disease, hyigh blood pressure or premature mortality?

This study’s findings are consistent with what has been seen among the other NHANES surveys of the American public. It’s also consistent with more than 17,000 studies published on salt and blood pressure since 1966, following populations for up to decades [reviewed here], none of which has shown that low-salt diets offer noticeable benefits. As Dr. David Klurfeld, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Wayne State University, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, said, “the better controlled studies fail to show a significant benefit on blood pressure for large groups with sodium restriction.” [Addendum: Low-salt diets have also been shown in randomized clinical trials to date, to offer no benefit in preventing high blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia).] The evidence behind popular claims that salt is dangerous and that lowering salt is healthful, was examined here.

When we see a low-salt diet being prescribed as part of the treatment for an elderly Grandparent suffering from heart or kidney failure, it’s easy to think that if we eat low-salt it might prevent us ending up with those health problems. As logical as this simplistic notion might seem, it doesn’t work that way. Treatments can’t be confused with preventions. It would be like advocating chemotherapy for everyone to prevent cancers. Or, believing that if everyone ate less sugar it could prevent diabetes, since regulating blood sugars is part of diabetes management.

Cochrane recently released a systematic review of the clinical trial evidence on recommendations to reduce dietary salt for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. They examined randomized, controlled clinical trials studying low-salt diets, lasting at least 6 months and recording the short-term or long-term effects on cardiovascular disease, blood pressure and mortality. The eleven quality trials they identified had studied healthy people with normal blood pressures, people with high blood pressure and people being treated for high blood pressure.

Deaths didn’t differ between the low-salt intervention groups and the control groups. The same number of people died over time, whether they were on low-salt diets or not. After 1 to 5 years on low-salt diets, those who’d gotten advice to eat low-salt diets and intensive behavioral interventions, saw their systolic blood pressures reduced by a mere 1.1 mmHg, and diastolic blood pressures by 0.6 mmHg, even while successfully lowering salt intakes as confirmed by urinary 24-hour sodium excretions by 35.5 mmol.

Most of the public has no idea that the salt in our diets has such a nominal effect. As the reviewers wrote: “This reduction was not enough to expect an important health benefit.” Changes in blood pressures were also unrelated to the degree sodium had been reduced — in other words, more wasn’t better.

The Cochrane reviewers concluded that even “intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programmes, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials.” For patients on antihypertensive medications, if future clinical trials can show that low-salt diets help reduce need for blood pressure medications without increasing cardiovascular events, they said, then "targeting low-salt diet interventions might be justified among patients with elevated blood pressure requiring drug treatment.” But there is no clinical evidence to support a benefit for the general public.

Remember that the Dietary Guidelines are about dietary advice for the general population, ages 2 years and up, not those suffering from certain medical conditions such as kidney disease and under the care of their doctor.


The flip side

If there’s no support that salt reduction improves health among the public, can such advice potentially harm people?

There’s a reason that the human species has always craved salt and gone out of its way to get it. But the idea that salt is actually good for us has become antithetical to today’s ideologies of healthy eating.

Our tastes for salt have an innate purpose, yet we rarely think about the benefits of salt or why we need it. As cardiologists have pointed out, our bodies are designed for salt and to compensate for excess intakes. When most of us eat a lot of salt, we just get thirsty and drink water, and our bodies excrete the excess sodium, while maintaining the balance of sodium in our blood and maintain our blood pressures. Having too much salt in our bodies, called hypernatremia, is extremely rare and occurs in about 1% of debilitated hospitalized patients as a symptom of an underlying disease or inability to drink water.

When we eat low salt diets, however, our sodium reserves are lower. So, if we get sick, exercise or go out in the hot sun and then drink water essential to avoiding dehydration, the amount of sodium in our body can more quickly become diluted to dangerously low levels.* That’s called hyponatremia. It’s the most common electrolyte disorder and a special risk for infants and elderly, according to Dr. Sandy Craig, M.D., at the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It’s also dangerous and can result in swelling of our brain, seizures, coma, heat stroke, leg cramps, heart arrhythmias and circulatory collapse.

Not surprisingly, some of the longest-living people in the world also have the highest salt consumptions. Salt not only makes food taste better, it also improves the flavor of foods for those whose tastes or appetites are diminished, helping to prevent nutritional deficiencies especially among vulnerable populations, such as children and elderly. Salt has also had invaluable roles in food preparation and preservation, baking, culturing cheese, and making our food safer to eat since the earliest days of mankind. The healthful benefits of salts, discussed here, also include the importance of the very first functional food: iodized salt.

It’s also become popular to believe that we’re eating dramatically more salt over recent decades, because of all that processed food and all. The evidence doesn’t support this oft-repeated claim, as was covered in the salt shaker article.

There are growing numbers of studies in the medical literature suggesting low-salt diets might risk negative effects on our health in other ways, such as activating the rennin-angiotensin system and the sympathetic nervous system and increasing insulin resistance. These effects could actually raise risks for cardiovascular disease, according to the European Society of Cardiology Guidelines. In contrast, these experts reported randomized clinical trial evidence suggests that “an abundant sodium intake may improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, especially in diabetic, salt-sensitive, and or medicated essential hypertensive subjects.”

The importance of sodium to the survival of patients was dramatically shown in a study just published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Cardiologists followed 40 patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), examining the role hyponatremia might play in their prognosis and right heart function. As they noted, hyponatremia is already known to be associated with decompensated heart failure and poor prognosis in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction. They found that those with hyponatremia were more likely to be hospitalized, have poorer right heart function, and a ten-fold higher risk of death than those with normal sodium levels. Hyponatremia remained a predictor of PAH outcomes after adjusting for World Health Organization class, diuretic use, right atrial pressure, and cardiac index. Among the patients in their study with hyponatremia, about 15% had survived two years, compared to 85% of those with normal sodium levels.

There are a lot of urban legends about salt, from “salt kills” to “cutting salt can add years to your life.” The scariest thing isn’t salt, though. It’s that scare-based legends and myths, rather than good science, are guiding public health policies, the “nutrition” education being given children, and the public health messages teaching everyone to fear salt. Agendas that are not about health.

© 2008 Sandy Szwarc

[General Zod]

Too much salt can make you fat? That's a new one. I've always heard of the blood pressure and cholesterol thing, which makes sense to reduce your intake, but to cut it to as low as possible?

[Medic]

Very interesting...anyone familiar with this site? It looks like it has good credibility in general:


http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/200 ... althy.html

No, but to give a bit of corroboration from what looks like a very legit site I discovered... yesterday[?] here's (http://health-evidence.ca -- a Canadian site originally stood up by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research & manned by a review team full of PhD's) I found this. PDF 498KB

It's topic reads "Systematic review of long term effects of advice to reduce dietary salt in adults" and notes:

What is already known on this topic

Restricting sodium intake in people with hypertension reduces blood pressure Long term effects (on blood pressure, mortality, and morbidity) of reduced salt intake in people with and without hypertension are unclear

What this study adds

Few deaths and cardiovascular events have been reported in salt reduction trials

Meta-analysis shows that blood pressure was reduced (systolic by 1.1 mm Hg, diastolic by 0.6 mm Hg) at 13 to 60 months, with a reduction in sodium excretion of almost a quarter (35.5 mmol/24 hours)

The interventions used were highly intensive and unsuited to primary care or population prevention programmes

Lower salt intake may help people on antihypertensive drugs to stop their medication while maintaining good control of blood pressure, but there are doubts about effects of sodium reduction on overall health

So right off the bat it notes that what positive we do know about low-sodium diets applies only to specific health cases. Nothing otherwise here is concretely in accord with your article, and it's from 2002 to boot, but most crucially 1) it doesn't contradict yours and 2) it mentions that there is cause for concern about low-sodium diets (which happened to be beyond this study's ability to measure):

Comparison with previous studies

It is unclear what effects a low sodium diet has on cardiovascular events and mortality. Lowering sodium intake may have adverse effects on vascular endothelium through stimulation of the renin-angiotensin system (37) and on serum total and low density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. (4) In cohort studies, lower salt intake in people with hypertension has been associated with higher levels of cardiovascular disease (38) and in general populations with greater all cause mortality. (39, 40) However, among obese people lower salt intake may be associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular events. (41, 42) These apparently contradictory findings may be explained by confounding or by differential sensitivity to salt intake but make it less clear that salt restriction is without hazards.

*note* the numbers are citations... I'm not listing them here, but FYI they're at the bottom of the PDF.


The real loser here though is the scientific and medical research communities. They do all of the work on these subjects but various entities, in this case the healthcare industry, will latch onto one or another of their works over the years and build up fantastic brain-bugs which, when contradicted by the weight of evidence against them, makes scientists look like they're flip-flopping. The very word and idea is political poison in the States thanks to the Right -- things of this nature undoubtedly contribute to the anti-intellectual streak in this country. Especially since an ignorant laymen likely to bandwagon to noted Global-Warming Expert Glenn Beck's point of view on scientific issues is just as unlikely to distinguish 1) between minority studies articulating health benefits of low-sodium diets, 2) the fantastic, misleading claims of the healthcare industry and media and 3) what scientific consensus actually has to say on the matter.

[Medic]

Too much salt can make you fat? That's a new one. I've always heard of the blood pressure and cholesterol thing, which makes sense to reduce your intake, but to cut it to as low as possible?

Hehe, yeah. Skinny as I am, I've never needed the healthcare or weight loss industries and thus never taken them seriously either. I was exposed to dietary information of a legitimate nature 1st in high school science classes and 2nd in the Army. What did the Army have to say about low-sodium diets? You'll fucking pass the fuck out in the heat, that's what and sooner or later, you see it, too. Someone becomes a heat casualty (or simply embarrasses themselves and passes out in the heat) cause they didn't drink enough water or eat enough food. (or drank too much the night before ) And the IV bags used to bring-them-to aren't full of just water, but saline water -- with dissolved salt inside.

So just intuitively I always questioned the wisdom of low-sodium foods and diets, since it's something fundamentally necessary to be active in hot and cold climates and weather, at least on a short-term basis. Sucking in just enough to make your sweat taste sweet for years and years can't be good, either, I would've supposed in the past and apparently rightfully so.

[mr friendly guy]

So the summary is that low salt diet might help in people with certain diseases but in the average people it doesn't help. I will wait for up to date (a respected medical site which reviews articles and makes recommendations, and is used by a lot of doctors) to update their information on it before first. Since currently up to date latest info on salt reduction is

Blood pressure reduction — Dietary sodium reduction can reduce BP in normotensive, prehypertensive, and hypertensive individuals, including the elderly [32]. An estimate of the amount of BP lowering was illustrated in a 2004 meta-analysis of 17 trials of patients with hypertension and 11 in patients with normal BP [33]. A decrease in sodium intake of approximately 75 meq/day for four or more weeks resulted in a fall in BP of 5/3 mmHg among hypertensives and 2/1 mmHg among normotensives. In many other trials, however, sodium reduction was either too short-lived or too moderate to fully ascertain the antihypertensive potential of sodium restriction.

Although the reductions in BP observed in normotensive patients are small, they could, if sustained over long periods, provide considerable protection against cardiovascular events (show table 1) [34,35].

32 . Appel, LJ, Espeland, MA, Easter, L, et al. Effects of reduced sodium intake on hypertension control in older individuals. Arch Intern Med 2001; 161:685.

33. He, F, MacGregor, G. Effect of longer-term modest salt reduction on blood pressure. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2004; 3:CD004937.

34. Cook, NR, Cohen, J, Hebert, PR, et al. Implications of small reductions in diastolic blood pressure for primary prevention. Arch Intern Med 1995; 155:701.

35. Cook, NR, Cutler, JA, Obarzanek, E, et al. Long term effects of dietary sodium reduction on cardiovascular disease outcomes: observational follow-up of the trials of hypertension prevention (TOHP). BMJ 2007; 334:885.

This seems at odds with the Cochrane review, so I will wait and see what becomes of it.

I also find this bit interesting

To rule out possibilities that the results could reflect the affects of cancers or illnesses, the authors excluded those Americans who’d died within the first 6 months; those who’d had a previous heart attack, stroke or heart failure;

High blood pressure is a known risk factor for stroke and heart attacks. Salt intake is thought to effect high blood pressure which is what they are disputing. If that being the case, I don't see why there isn't some people who have had strokes and heart failure and low salt diet and some with high salt diet. Then a direct comparison can be made without having to exclude entire subgroups where high salt diet is postulated to cause problems.

As for heart failure, its well known to cause hyponatraemia, due to EXCESS salt (sodium) despite the overall concentration being lower (due to excess fluid retention, diluting the sodium). In fact one of the drugs used to treat heart failure called spironolactone, works by inhibiting the hormone (aldosterone) responsible for retaining sodium. People with aldosterone deficiency (addison's disease) do have low blood pressure.

It might be that low salt diets only help in a certain subgroup like they say. However, sometimes a preventive measure can is implemented for large portions of society, as its thought its cost benefit is to our advantage.

To give a hypothetical example, say drug x decreases the risk of strokes. The number needed to treat is calculated to be 20, so for every 20 people we treat we prevent one stroke. Now one might think that we are wasting money treating the other 19 people with this new drug (since we don't know which one of the 20 people we will prevent the stroke), however its thought that the benefits of preventing that one stroke outweighs the cost of prescribing the drug to 20 people.

If may very well be that the number needed to treat with low salt diets is extremely high, however if enough people in the overall population benefit, it still may be worth suggesting this treatment in the sense that most people don't benefit, but we get some that do and the overal benefits outweigh the costs. Note when I say enough people in the population, that includes everyone including those with diseases, ie not just population minus people they deliberately select out of the study, especially with ones who theoretically will benefit from a low salt diet.

[SirNitram]

Going onto a low-sodium diet if your normal is bad.

Even if, like me, you have a condition requiring controlled sodium intake, going to the levels of, say, the UK's suggested intake, can have very bad effects. It starts easy enough, just annoying cramps.

Of course, after the cramps comes the electrolite imbalance I got once. Brain damage is possible from this.

[Knife]

Going onto a low-sodium diet if your normal is bad.

Even if, like me, you have a condition requiring controlled sodium intake, going to the levels of, say, the UK's suggested intake, can have very bad effects. It starts easy enough, just annoying cramps.

Of course, after the cramps comes the electrolite imbalance I got once. Brain damage is possible from this.

Indeed, Na is one of the major ions in neurons to create an action potential. Na levels in humans, though, are usually a shit load higher than K levels and it is usually the K levels that people fuck with. Old people drinking too much water can flush a lot of their K out and cause neurological problems way before they can wash out enough salt for the same.

[Johonebesus]

Why does salt burn my tongue? I have to shake or scrape salt off of fries or chips else they be inedible. I can't stand overly salty processed foods. I once used salt water to treat a blister in my mouth, and my tongue burned worse than the blister. I've been like that my whole life.

[Darth Wong]

This cuts to the heart of a basic problem with the way we perceive food and health: we classify foods as "good" and "bad", even though the same food might be "good" or "bad" depending on other factors.

It reminds me of the situation with alcohol, which many people tout as "healthy" because it is a blood thinner. This argument presumes that every human being on Earth needs blood thinners. Far too many people do, but that's due to other problems with their lifestyle, and it is certainly not universal, nor is it an excuse to label a blood thinner drug as necessarily "healthy".

[Knife]

Why does salt burn my tongue? I have to shake or scrape salt off of fries or chips else they be inedible. I can't stand overly salty processed foods. I once used salt water to treat a blister in my mouth, and my tongue burned worse than the blister. I've been like that my whole life.

Meh, density of the taste buds on your tongue. Different people have different amounts which creates sensitivity to certain tastes. On a grand scale, those with a shit ton of taste buds of various types are the gormet types who can detect the specific flavors in complex foods. People with fewer buds are less discerning about foods.

Or more succinctly; more taste buds, more nerve endings, more stimuli to the brain about the Na burning the shit out of your tongue than the amount of nerve endings in your inner mouth.

[Shroom Man 777]

Salt is important for fluid retention. I heard that if you're traveling in the desert, you've got to have salt in your rations if you want to make it through alive.

I mean, come on, that stuff is in lots of intravenous fluids, like plain normal saline solution, which is also used to clean stuff. From my nursing school lessons, sodium restriction only applies to those people with hypertension. Fluid retention is bad since it increases blood volume, which is already problematic for a person with problems in their overworked tickers.

[Knife]

This cuts to the heart of a basic problem with the way we perceive food and health: we classify foods as "good" and "bad", even though the same food might be "good" or "bad" depending on other factors.

It reminds me of the situation with alcohol, which many people tout as "healthy" because it is a blood thinner. This argument presumes that every human being on Earth needs blood thinners. Far too many people do, but that's due to other problems with their lifestyle, and it is certainly not universal, nor is it an excuse to label a blood thinner drug as necessarily "healthy".

Indeed, which is why people can make billions of dollars off of selling garbage. From 1/3 less salt to high dose of water soluble vitamins that the body doesn't absorb and you just pee away.

[Knife]

Salt is important for fluid retention. I heard that if you're traveling in the desert, you've got to have salt in your rations if you want to make it through alive.

I mean, come on, that stuff is in lots of intravenous fluids, like plain normal saline solution, which is also used to clean stuff. From my nursing school lessons, sodium restriction only applies to those people with hypertension. Fluid retention is bad since it increases blood volume, which is already problematic for a person with problems in their overworked tickers.

Indeed, has to do with the counter current effect in the Nephron Loop. Diuretics really just regulate the amount of salt in your kidneys (nephrons), whether is is an antidiuretic and it absorbs more salt and lets more filtrate pass or leaves the salt in the filtrate and H2O is reabsorbed more.

[Xon]

Why does salt burn my tongue? I have to shake or scrape salt off of fries or chips else they be inedible. I can't stand overly salty processed foods. I once used salt water to treat a blister in my mouth, and my tongue burned worse than the blister. I've been like that my whole life.

Young children have something like 2-4 times more tastebuds than adults (over a much smaller area to boot!) Even teenagers have dramatically more taste buds than they will as an adult.

[mr friendly guy]

Part of the reasons salty water is given in IV preparations is to match the osmolality in your blood. If we gave someone pure water, it would be hypotonic relative to cells. To achieve osmotic balance, the cells would take in the water we are giving them. At first it would be ok, but as its forced to take more water in, it would swell and eventually lyse.

Kind of like that woman who kept on drinking water to win the Nintendo Wii. Her brain cells start swelling up and with the skull not getting any bigger, there was no space for the brain to expand. We kind of know what happened next.

[Knife]

Part of the reasons salty water is given in IV preparations is to match the osmolality in your blood. If we gave someone pure water, it would be hypotonic relative to cells. To achieve osmotic balance, the cells would take in the water we are giving them. At first it would be ok, but as its forced to take more water in, it would swell and eventually lyse.

Kind of like that woman who kept on drinking water to win the Nintendo Wii. Her brain cells start swelling up and with the skull not getting any bigger, there was no space for the brain to expand. We kind of know what happened next.

Indeed. What is it? 9% for isotonic for Na? Too much and the cells shrink, too much and they pop.

[mr friendly guy]

You are right. If its hypotonic the cells would expand. If the solution is hypertonic the cells shrink as water comes out of cell to maintain osmotic balance. Generally solutions are isotonic (hey I just notice it sounds so Star Trek like with the isoton bit ). But some hypertonic solutions exist for certain clinical indications, eg hypertonic saline for the treatment of severe hyponatraemia.

[Oskuro]

One of the reasons people think that salt makes you fat is precisely because of liquid retention. If you drop salt from your diet, you lose liquids, and thus seem to deflate. Of course, that's not real weight loss, just a loss of fluids that will come back as soon as you restore your salt levels to normal, and, furthermore, that loss of fluid is unhealthy.

But since slightly reducing your body volume with little effort seems to be preferrable to a healthy diet and exercise...

[Johonebesus]

Why does salt burn my tongue? I have to shake or scrape salt off of fries or chips else they be inedible. I can't stand overly salty processed foods. I once used salt water to treat a blister in my mouth, and my tongue burned worse than the blister. I've been like that my whole life.

Young children have something like 2-4 times more tastebuds than adults (over a much smaller area to boot!) Even teenagers have dramatically more taste buds than they will as an adult.

I don't think that is an issue anymore. Besides, there's a difference between a strong taste and pain.

[Xon]

I don't think that is an issue anymore. Besides, there's a difference between a strong taste and pain.

You do realise that spicey foods are 'hot' because they indice chemical burns? Highly salty solutions actually make good sterialization solutions because they kill off most types of bacteria, no shit that is going to cause pain in an open wound.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Salt is necessary. So is sugar. So is fat. Labelling them "good" or "bad" is simply a black and white fallacy. Moderation is what is needed, as with most things in life. I hear water is also bad for you, but wait, don't we need water to live? Mein Gott! Maybe we just need to consume a certain amount then. The basic metabolic pathways of the body cannot function without some of these no-no substances, so anyone hoping to live off some water and celery is soon going to find out what unhealthy really means. It's no different to those saying "Meat in a diet is unhealthy since it can cause colon cancer" and using that as an argument for us all to become veggies. What they take out-of-context, be it wilfully or not, is that eating ten kilos of fried bacon a day may not be a good lifestyle choice, but having a lean steak every other day might actually constitute a balanced diet with some salad and lo-salt garnish instead. It's all relative.

Additionally, the title of the thread displays one pet peeve of mine. It's "more than", not "then". How many people use "more then" in mathematical terminology? No one? Then why is it always confused on forums?

[Sea Skimmer]

This cuts to the heart of a basic problem with the way we perceive food and health: we classify foods as "good" and "bad", even though the same food might be "good" or "bad" depending on other factors.

It reminds me of the situation with alcohol, which many people tout as "healthy" because it is a blood thinner. This argument presumes that every human being on Earth needs blood thinners. Far too many people do, but that's due to other problems with their lifestyle, and it is certainly not universal, nor is it an excuse to label a blood thinner drug as necessarily "healthy".

You’ve got to love the fact that the most common prescription blood thinner, coumadin, is also used in an identical form as rat poison.

[Korvan]

I don't think that is an issue anymore. Besides, there's a difference between a strong taste and pain.

You do realise that spicey foods are 'hot' because they indice chemical burns? Highly salty solutions actually make good sterialization solutions because they kill off most types of bacteria, no shit that is going to cause pain in an open wound.

That's not exactly true. Spicey foods are hot because they contain a neurotoxin that stimulate pain receptors in the manner of a chemical burn. These toxins are specific to mammals and do not affect birds which is beneficial to the plants, as the seed dispersal from birds is much greater than mammals.

The burning and painful sensations associated with capsaicin result from its chemical interaction with sensory neurons. Capsaicin, as a member of the vanilloid family, binds to a receptor called the vanilloid receptor subtype 1 (VR1). [20] First cloned in 1997, VR1 is an ion channel-type receptor. VR1, which can also be stimulated with heat and physical abrasion, permits cations to pass through the cell membrane and into the cell when activated. The resulting depolarization of the neuron stimulates it to signal the brain. By binding to the VR1 receptor, the capsaicin molecule produces the same sensation that excessive heat or abrasive damage would cause, explaining why the spiciness of capsaicin is described as a burning sensation.

The VR1 ion channel has subsequently been shown to be a member of the superfamily of TRP ion channels, and as such is now referred to as TRPV1. There are a number of different TRP ion channels that have been shown to be sensitive to different ranges of temperature and probably are responsible for our range of temperature sensation. Thus, capsaicin does not actually cause a chemical burn, or indeed any damage to tissue at all; it causes only the sensation of one.

Link

[Justforfun000]

Additionally, the title of the thread displays one pet peeve of mine. It's "more than", not "then". How many people use "more then" in mathematical terminology? No one? Then why is it always confused on forums?

Oops. My bad. It's probably because the usage of "then" is more common in everyday sentences. I don't find I say as much that requires the "than" spelling...so sometimes I spell it incorrectly without noticing.

[Straha]

The real loser here though is the scientific and medical research communities. They do all of the work on these subjects but various entities, in this case the healthcare industry, will latch onto one or another of their works over the years and build up fantastic brain-bugs which, when contradicted by the weight of evidence against them, makes scientists look like they're flip-flopping. The very word and idea is political poison in the States thanks to the Right -- things of this nature undoubtedly contribute to the anti-intellectual streak in this country. Especially since an ignorant laymen likely to bandwagon to noted Global-Warming Expert Glenn Beck's point of view on scientific issues is just as unlikely to distinguish 1) between minority studies articulating health benefits of low-sodium diets, 2) the fantastic, misleading claims of the healthcare industry and media and 3) what scientific consensus actually has to say on the matter.

Actually, it's not the healthcare industry that's the major culprit here. The federal government has, for decades, been pressuring its organizations to make crystal clear rulings on what is "good" and what is "bad" with no real middle ground in between, and then legislating off of this very skewed understanding of biology. And when data wasn't available, they'd go ahead without it. A while back I saw a quote from a senator (I think) talking about legislation regarding fat content in food, saying to the effect that "sometimes, you have to be ahead of the science in matters like this." Then, after the health care and food industries have moved on the subject, the science comes in, the federal government acts like a bunch of headless chickens because they know that they fixed this problem not too long ago. But eventually the matter is legislated on but in a way that accommodates earlier legislation but is still as absolute when it comes to what is "bad" and what is "good", and then the healthcare and food industries look like schizophrenics for preaching two mutually exclusive things at once and lose all credibility.