Tim Worstall

Too Much Salt?

I am and have been dubious about the campaign to get us all to eat less salt, for one fairly obvious reason. Assuming that one’s kidneys are functioning properly, excess salt in the diet does not lead to an excess in the blood, it is excreted. Having said that I’m even more dubious about this report:

Advice on reducing your sodium intake should be taken with a pinch of
salt, according to the latest research. Not only is there no need to
eat less of it but it can also be positively dangerous for some
people’s health.
….

There was little to be gained, he said, by cutting
salt for anyone on a typical Western diet who eats the equivalent of
16g or three-and-half teaspoonfuls a day.

The
independent research, known as the Rotterdam Study, involved almost
8,000 people in their fifties and above. Each person’s sodium intake
was estimated from a nightly urine sample and compared with their blood
pressure over a month.

The findings showed that as
long as their salt intake was moderate – no more than 16g a day – there
was an insignificant effect on blood pressure.
…..
Other scientists at the conference, organised by European Union salt
producers, went further saying that the guidance to reduce salt intake
could be dangerous to pregnant women and the elderly.

No, it’s not that the report was given at a conference sponsored by the salt producers….cherry picking papers for a conferenceis very different than getting peopleto do research that supports you in the first place.
Rather, it’s the measurement system used. Given that I am already biased (prejudiced?) in thinking that it is whether the kidenys are excreting thesalt or notwhich is likely to be the problem, measuring the amount excreted, rather than the amount consumed, doesn’t really seem to work for me.

Still, I’ve been wrong on such scientific matters before and may well be here. Anyone care to explain to me why salt is so awful, if indeed it is true that we excrete the excess?

In

6 responses

  1. Ed Snack Avatar
    Ed Snack

    Tim, the salt debate is much like several other “scientific” debates around at present. There is an entrenched opinion in parts of academia (and public health bodies) that salt is bad, and no amount of data can change that opinion. The study you refer to above is in fact (IMHO) representative of the majority of research in the area. Salt is not harmful except possibly to a specific subset of people with specific disorders, when taken in reasonable quantities, and 16g a day is quite a lot.
    If you look at http://www.junkscience.com/jan01/saltwars.htm, this gives some overview to the debate.

    Reply
  2. Auntymarianne Avatar
    Auntymarianne

    I used to live in West Africa and we actually had to give visiting people salt tablets. They would swan in, think they could eat their salt-free diets, scorn our fairly salty dishes, dehydrate like jellyfish stranded on Chesil Beach in midsummer, and pass out.
    People NEED salt. All mammals do. Why else do livestock farmers provide salt licks for their stock?

    Reply
  3. Andrew Duffin Avatar
    Andrew Duffin

    Salt is pretty much harmless – except, like everything, when taken to grotesque excess – and it’s true, we do excrete any excess. All the furore about it is a typical piece of epidemiological claptrap.
    What I liked though, was the sub-headline in the Telegraph – “Experts have decided that a reasonable amount of Sodium, perhaps a couple of teaspoons a day, does no harm.”
    Yes, that’s what they said, Sodium.
    Have these clowns any idea what Sodium is or how it reacts with water? If that’s the level of their knowledge why do we even read their articles, much less take any notice of them?

    Reply
  4. KathyF Avatar
    KathyF

    When I first moved here I was surprised at all the attention being paid to salt in the diet, while much worse substances–transfats–went virtually unnoticed.
    But then health information seems behind the U.S. in many areas.
    Salt and potassium have a see-saw effect on each other, and if you eat plenty of potassium, salt is no problem. (Potassium is found in fruits and vegetables.) Most people get plenty, and unless those aforementioned kidney problems exist, salt is nothing to worry about.

    Reply
  5. Monjo Avatar
    Monjo

    You can have too much salt, just as you can have too much tomato juice, or too much water, or too much chocolate. An obscene excess of anything will kill you.
    Since sodium is vital for cellular processes, of course, salt is vital in the diet. In years gone by Poland was extremely wealthy due to its abundance of easily extracted salt.
    If you have too much salt your body will retain too much water and you will need to drink to flush it out. Similarly too much absorbed salt could affect cellular processes. My advice to anyone is that you probably eat more than enough salt in your regular diet to maintain optimal cellular processes and that therefore there’s no benefit deliberatly adding loads. But as Tim states as long as your kidneys work okay you’d have to consume a lot to do any real damage. And that’s the problem, kidneys can be easily ****ed up. If for no other reason you may want to be careful on salt to reduce the problem of kidney stones. Heh heh, you dont want to be passing one of those bad boys through your urethra!

    Reply
  6. Macgrath Avatar
    Macgrath

    High-salt diet is known to induce or aggravate hypertension in animal models of hypertension and in humans. When Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 60) are fed a moderately high-fat diet (32% kcal fat, 0.8% NaCl) for 10 wk, about one-half develop obesity [obesity prone (OP)] and mild hypertension, whereas the other half [obesity resistant (OR)] maintain body weight equivalent to a low-fat control (C) and are normotensive.

    Reply

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