Get The Salt Out!

By Elizabeth Szlek


You know there is a problem in the American diet when NBC Nightly News does a whole piece on it. Some weeks ago, I watched them go on and on about the fact that the American diet contains too much salt. They hit some of the obvious targets, like fast food and other processed foods, but, of course, they didn’t really give the whole salt story. Things are a lot worse than you might expect out there in salt land, and no one is telling the truth to us all. To find out what is really happening you have to go to those more obscure sources, like the books you find in the health food stores, or the web sites which rise up in counterpoint to the major media outlets on the web. When you get to these places, you tend to get a little angry, because you realize that you have been skipping down a garden path to nutritional hell!

But We All Need Salt!

Yes, of course, salt is a necessary element in the diet of all animals. We need it to live. Salt is, of course, sodium chloride, and throughout man’s time on earth, he has spent much of his energy seeking salt. I never really knew this fact until I read Mark Kurlansky’s simple titled epic saga, Salt. In this book you find the entire world history of empires which rose and fell upon the ability to find and sell salt. Salt figures in many world events as an economic force and source of great wealth, for the simple fact that before the days of refrigeration, it served as the main preservative of food in all nations. Salting meat, and preserving vegetables in salt, known as pickling, kept people from starvation for thousands of years. But, in this day and age, salt is rarely used for these purposes, and few of us make salt cod or sauerkraut our main dietary staples. Yet, the American diet is more loaded with salt than ever before. Where does it all come from?

It is estimated that 90% of the American diet consists of processed foods, and, as in millennia past, it is salt that is doing the preserving. We just aren’t tuned into this fact, and are gleefully consuming two or three times the amount of salt we need, each day.

How Much Is Too Much?

If we harken back to the Paleolithic Era, and look at the diet of those people, we would find that their diet was high in potassium, and low in sodium, because all natural unprocessed foods contain more potassium than sodium. In fact, a diet high in these foods would have contained about ten times more potassium than sodium, according to the author of the fine little book Get The Salt Out! This meant that our bodies learned not to hold onto potassium, but due to its scarcity, we developed a taste for salt, and a penchant for seeking it in our environment. If you’re like me, I’ll bet you never said to yourself: “I need to eat something potassium-y!” Salt, though, that’s another story. I generally go looking for salt on a regular basis, but luckily, I don’t have to find a salt lick or brine spring, I can just find my jar of macadamias!

Humans in general need about 2000 milligrams of salt a day to keep things running smoothly. That’s equivalent to about a teaspoon. Not much, especially when you consider that many foods, such as meats, already contain salt naturally.

What is the Problem with Salt?
Too much salt can wreak havoc with our bodies. Too much sodium can produce a host of life-threatening conditions, such as high blood pressure, leading to heart attack, stroke, serious kidney diseases or kidney failure, hardening of the arteries, enlarged heart and congestive heart failure.

In addition to that, too much dietary sodium increases the risk for osteoporosis and probably kidney stones, as well, because excess sodium causes calcium to be lost through the urine, and then blood levels of calcium fall, prompting calcium to move from the bones to the blood.. We all know that too much sodium causes fluid retention, and weight gain, but it also produces headaches, and stomach ulcers and stomach cancer.

There is also a genetic component to salt intake. It has been theorized that African-Americans, who greatly outpace others in developing high blood pressure, may have less tolerance to sodium, because in their native lands in Africa, they consumed largely a diet high in potassium, due to its high vegetable content.

More Bad News

For years I have been going back and forth: Should I bother using sea salt, or use the regular stuff that is dirt cheap? I really couldn’t taste the difference, and the price difference was large. Now I know the truth: Like everything else, processed salt, by which I mean refined salt is actually HARMFUL to the body, because it has been stripped of all its minerals, besides sodium and chloride, and it has been heated at high temperatures that changes its chemical structure. It is chemically cleaned and bleached, and treated with anti-caking agents, which cause it to remain in the body, and actually build up. The anti-caking agents used contain, generally, aluminum-based chemicals, and I hope you know how bad THAT is for you. Lastly, because this process makes salt bitter, some sugar is added to the salt. Contrast all that with sea salt, which contains innumerable minerals, no additives, and just plain natural salt. I’ll never go back to the little girl with her shaker again!

Processed Foods

I know I have beat this drum before, but: You have to stop eating processed foods! They are simply loaded with salt! Check out a little innocent pack of Ramen noodles: 1100 milligrams of salt! That’s half your day’s limit! But here is a real shocker: Yes, a can of cola contains loads of High Fructose Corn Syrup, but guess what else it has loads of: Salt! Few of us know this little factoid. They need the salt in there for some reason, maybe to preserve the junk in its pristine state. So, the need for more and more sugar to cover the salt.

All processed foods are teeming with sodium, but if you would just stop and read the labels of everything you eat, just once, you will begin to get an idea of just how much damage you are doing to your body on a regular basis. It is said that only 5% of our salt intake comes through the salt we add when cooking, and just 6% is added by our table salt shaker. This means that, again, 90% of our salt is from processed foods! Take stock of your salt intake and lose the processed foods! Your body will thank you!



Elizabeth Szlek is a trained chef and has taught nutrition and Healthy Cooking. She is also the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, and can be reached at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.