I advise my clients to include unrefined sea salt in the diet. This sometimes gets questioned by clients whose doctors have put them on low or no-salt diets. So it was good to see this article questioning the paucity of research on the supposed link between hypertension and salt. Like this author, I have always had difficulty finding the supposed link. It is reassuring to read that it may be nothing more than accepted dogma with no robust research to support it. And the debate doesn’t even begin to look at the difference between refined and un-refined salt.
Main points on NYT article
- While sports nutritionists have since come around to recommend that we should indeed replenish salt when we sweat it out in physical activity, the message that we should avoid salt at all other times remains strong.
- The eat-less-salt argument has been surprisingly controversial — and difficult to defend. Not because the food industry opposes it, but because the actual evidence to support it is so weak.
- The eat-less-salt message has “made a commitment to salt education that goes way beyond the scientific facts.”
- Evidence from recent published studies (2010-2012) actually suggests that restricting how much salt we eat can increase our likelihood of dying prematurely.
- Italian researchers began publishing the results from a series of clinical trials, all of which reported that, among patients with heart failure, reducing salt consumption increased the risk of death.
Read full story here: NYT Sunday Review June 2 2012 Salt, We Misjudged You »
Take this advice with a pinch of salt »
More Salt articles
Scientific American Jul 9 2011: It's Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science Read article »
Science 18 Sep 2014: Salt is not the enemy. Guess what ruins your health instead? Read article »
Open Heart 2014: The wrong white crystals
Sugar not salt the culprit in hypertension and cardiovascular disease Study »
