Is salt really bad ? Taking the right quantities is important.
Q.1.What is salt.
Salt is composed of sodium and chloride ions. It’s 40% sodium and 60% chloride. The sodium ions are important for a lot of bodily action while chloride ions help in stabilizing the pH of the stomach. All cells in the body use sodium, and it is particularly important for maintaining the fluid balance of cells and tissues, and for nerve signalling. As sodium is a widely used component of salt, nutritionists tend to talk about sodium content or sodium levels, rather than salt.
Q.2.What are the major sources of salt?
The two major sources of salt are sea salt and rock salt. Salt is recovered from seawater by evaporation, while rock salt is extracted from deposits in rock. Rock and sea salt are generally large crystals or flakes of relatively unprocessed salt, while table salt which is generally used in eating is milled and processed to remove impurities and has anticaking agents added to make it flow freely.
Sea Salt: Seawater in shallow ponds is evaporated by sunshine and wind. As it becomes more concentrated, it is shifted closer to the harvesting facility. At about 25 per cent salinity, salt begins to crystallize.
Rock salt:It can be mined directly by cutting or with explosives, or can be dissolved to create very concentrated brine that is pumped to the surface to sit in evaporation ponds from which the salt is recovered.
Q.3.What is the role of salt in the body. Is it important.
Yes, salt is important for the body. Normal blood contains sodium at a concentration of approximately 140 mmol/L and chloride at 100 mmol/L. Potassium concentration in the blood is only at 4 mmol/L, and calcium is at 2.2 mmol/L.There is more than 50 times more sodium than calcium in the blood. No wonder we need salt so badly. Sodium ions are used in the cellular systems that shift water and other substances in and out of cells and generate charges across cell membranes (allowing nerve impulses to be transmitted around the body).
Q.4. What are the consequences of eating low salt than the recommended quantities.
- For example, eating less than ½ teaspoon of salt per day can lower blood volume by 10 to 15 percent leading to low blood pressure and other related consequences.
- Low-salt intake increases erectile dysfunction, sleep disturbances, and fatigue.
- During exercise, the average person sweats more than two-thirds of a teaspoon of salt per hour. If the body has low reserve of the salt it will lead t dehydration and low blood volume.
Q.5.How Salt and blood pressure are co-related.
Prolonged high salt intake causes high levels of sodium in the blood. As a result, the kidneys remove less water from the blood, causing high blood pressure. Salt came into our life around 5000 years ago. Before that our ancestors do not have any salt eating habits and use to get the necessary salt from eating food in which it was naturally present. Hence the body got used to preserving whatever the salt was taken from nature. Fast forward to modern times our intake of salt through eating processed food has increased 10 to 20 times greater than 5000 years back. This high consumption has led to one of the causes for the increase of blood pressure. As the human body has been geared to conserve the salt in the body (evolutionary )now it finds difficult to remove this dramatic increase in the salt level from the body.
Q.6.How the addition of salt to food started.
For several million years the ancestors of humans, like all other mammals, ate a diet that contained less than 0.25 g of salt per day. A most important factor which helped the start of the salt intake by humans was the discovery that meat and food can be preserved by putting them into concentrated brine solutions. Highly salted food suppresses the salt taste receptors in the mouth making other food insipid and unappetising. Hence the craving of salt developed. Salt would have been added in the same amount in other unsalted foods as being added in the same concentrations that of preserved food, hence the habit of eating salt started.
Q.7.What are the underlying causes that increase Blood pressure.
Data suggests that obesity coupled with a lack of exercise is an important factor involved in the development of high BP. However, there is also stronger evidence that salt intake is related to the development of hypertension, and in particular, the rise in BP with age, and that fruit and vegetables through an increase in potassium intake have the opposite effect and may, in certain circumstances, partially offset the effects of a high salt intake.(Appel LJ, Moore TJ, Obarzanek E, Vollmer WM, Svetkey LP, Sacks FM et al. A clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. DASH Collaborative Research Group. N Engl J Med 1997; 336: 1117–1124)
Q.8.What are the major effects of high salt intake and water retention?
Numerous studies have shown that a high intake of salt and water retention is positively correlated. High salt intake leads to a high amount of sodium ions in the body which in turn leads to high retention of the water and this expands the extracellular volume. Approximately 1.5 l of extracellular fluid is retained and this continues as long as a higher salt intake is consumed. This increase in extracellular fluid exacerbates all forms of salt and water retention, and leads to heart failure and is a major cause of oedema in women, aggravating both cyclical and idiopathic oedema.(MacGregor GA, de Wardener HE. Idiopathic edema. In: Schrier RW and Gottschalk CW (eds). Diseases of the Kidney. Little Brown and Company: Boston, 1997, pp 2343–2352).
Q.9.What is the ideal intake of the salt.
Most official recommendations for maximum daily sodium intake are around 2g per day. The 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend less than 2.3g of sodium per day or around one teaspoon of salt. But the general consequence is that 4 to 6 grams of salt eating is right for the body and a higher of >9 gms or more will lead to high salt-related issues in the body. Eat your salt with real food and make sure you choose a high-quality salt
Q.10.Why industry is less open to reduction of salt in processed foods.
- One of the significant reasons for adding high salt in food by industry is to make cheap, unpalatable food edible at no cost.
- Food manufacturers often point that consumers prefer saltier products, and if the salt content were lowered, it would lead to less acceptance by consumers.
- Salt is a significant factor of thirst, and any reduction in salt intake will reduce fluid consumption leading to a decline in soft drink and mineral water sales. Major companies that sell soft drinks are also the largest manufacturer of salted snacks, hence complimenting sales of each other.
- The meat industry uses salt as the water-binding properties increase by adding salt, on an average basis, by 20%.
Salt making
Q.11.Is the high intake of salt also is the major cause of stone formation?
Salt intake is one of the major dietary determinants of urinary calcium excretion. Studies and randomized trials show that a reduction in salt intake causes a decrease in urinary calcium excretion. As calcium is the main component of most urinary stones, salt intake is, therefore, an important cause of renal stones. When salt intake is increased, there is a negative calcium balance with stimulation of mechanisms not only to increase intestinal absorption of calcium but also to mobilize calcium from bone. Other studies have shown that reducing salt intake causes a positive calcium balance, and it is likely that reducing salt intake would slow down the loss of calcium from bone that occurs as we grow older.
Q.12.What is the Nutrient composition of the salts available in the market.
| Iodized table salt | Redmond Real salt (USA) | Celtic sea salt | Himalayan (Pink Salt) | |
| Iodine | 450 mcg | 178 mcg | 6 mcg | 100-250 mcg |
| Calcium | 0 mg | 45 mg | 17 mg | 37 mg |
| Magnesium | 0 mg | 8 mg | 40 mg | 1.4 mg |
| Potassium | 0 mg | 9 mg | 9 mg | 28-32 mg |
Q.13. Are salt substitutes really helps?
Many salt substitutes contain potassium and chloride. People with kidney problems often have trouble processing potassium chloride or getting rid of the excess. Secondly, the body needs sodium for normal bodily functions and maintaining water balance. Hence the real option is real salt intakes with recommended quantities.
Start eating real food and salting to taste.