How Much Salt Is To Much?

Josh

Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2018
Messages
344
I've massively increased my salt intake recently, I eat two meals a day that i add salt with. I have the shaker on hand and salt to taste, but i'm talking continously salting throughout the meal until every bite i can taste that pleasant salt taste. Also eat salted butter and cheese during the day and in general i do eat water rich foods quite often like melons/grapes etc.

Is there a limit one should have with salt? What are the symptoms of too much salt? Is all that stuff with it rising blood pressure and other health related problems the mainstream says about it complete BS?

this is the one i use: Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt | Buy Online | Sous Chef UK
 

wild-bee

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2016
Messages
50
Location
UK
me too, I use this unrefined 'organic' french salt: https://www.souschef.co.uk/coarse-grey-sea-salt.html it makes food taste amazing and has lots of other minerals in other than sodium. Don't know how much is too much but I have 1 tsp in OJ, 1/4 tsp in bone broth and 1/4 tsp in vegetable juice every day. Studies done on salt consumption test highly refined sodium crap so no wonder they find problems
 

smith

Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2017
Messages
386
You get cloudier urine with high salt intake? Urine "sediment"?
 

tankasnowgod

Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,131
I've massively increased my salt intake recently, I eat two meals a day that i add salt with. I have the shaker on hand and salt to taste, but i'm talking continously salting throughout the meal until every bite i can taste that pleasant salt taste. Also eat salted butter and cheese during the day and in general i do eat water rich foods quite often like melons/grapes etc.

Is there a limit one should have with salt? What are the symptoms of too much salt? Is all that stuff with it rising blood pressure and other health related problems the mainstream says about it complete BS?

this is the one i use: Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt | Buy Online | Sous Chef UK

From this video, I heard that salt intake in Europe in the 1500s was about 40-100g a day, which is very high-



As far as excess salt rising blood pressure, it likely would only do it for a few hours/ days after you increase salt intake. Even then, most of the studies show it's only about 5 points or so. Chronically restricting salt is far more likely to increase your blood pressure, by causing a higher production of aldosterone. In fact, ACE inhibitors lower blood pressure by lowering aldosterone. The fact that increasing salt intake does the exact same thing tells me that common advice to reduce salt intake is fraudulent.
 

jzeno

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2017
Messages
543
@tankasnowgod

>40 to 100 g / d

Holy..

Before I began reading on salt on this forum I was getting 4.3 g / d of salt.

Need more!
 

stargazer1111

Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2017
Messages
425
Sometimes I wonder if our cravings get mis-wired over time. I was similar to the 3 year old kid in the first video when I was a kid. I massively craved salt all the time. I would eat it straight from the shaker. I would dump tons and tons of it on everything, especially pizza. I remember when my parents would give me epsom salt baths, I would eat the epsom salt because it tasted enough like table salt.

I have struggled massively with stress and adrenal problems throughout my adult years. What is interesting is that craving for salt isn't really there anymore.

However, I recently started adding 1/2 of a teaspoon of baking soda to each 12 oz. glass of OJ I drink per day. I usually drink 4 12 oz. glasses per day, so this equates to 2 teaspoons of baking soda which gives me roughly 2.4 extra grams of sodium per day. This increases me up from about 2.6 to 4 grams of sodium per day.

This has really changed how I feel. I feel so much better after doing this yet my brain was not craving sodium chloride like it used to and I'm wondering why that is if I need this extra sodium.

What is interesting is that 4 grams per day seems to be the sweet spot. From what I can gather, going below 4 grams of sodium per day increases all-cause mortality and going over 4 grams per day begins to increase all-cause mortality.
 

LiveWire

Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2019
Messages
176
I don't get the sea salt obsession. By definition is has to be one of the filthiest things people consume. Aside from the fact that the ocean is a toxic dump site and the end of the road for most chemicals and heavy metals manufactured on this planet, sea salt is usually harvested on coasts and beaches in the world’s poorest third world countries, where every sewer ends in the sea. You’re eating other people’s feces.

Regular mined salt is also sea salt, just from a sea that existed millions of years ago, hence it’s free of all the above issues.

Much like refined sugar, refined salt is very pure. Yes it often contains additives but you can easily find one with the lowest number. You can also find mined salt with zero additives. Though I’d say iodine is useful.
 
Last edited:
L

Lord Cola

Guest
If we need so much salt, why does it taste so bad to put ample salt on food? I seem to need about 15 grams of sodium a day (which is nearly 40 grams of salt) to feel functional but it makes everything I eat taste terrible. Is salt compensating for something else we need?
 
P

Peatness

Guest
I will never understand salt. Just putting this here to follow this thread
 
L

Lord Cola

Guest
I will never understand salt. Just putting this here to follow this thread
I don't crave salt at all, especially with "peaty" foods like milk, but if I stop eating salt, as a result of following my cravings, I start to feel terrible - chills, bad mood, etc. Starchy foods taste much better with salt than fruits or milk, but starch causes headaches.
 
P

Peatness

Guest
I don't crave salt at all, especially with "peaty" foods like milk, but if I stop eating salt, as a result of following my cravings, I start to feel terrible - chills, bad mood, etc. Starchy foods taste much better with salt than fruits or milk, but starch causes headaches.
Me too. Salt makes me a very nice person to be around but my blood pressure doesn't seem to like it.
 

Mossy

Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
2,043
From my experience, I believe that not enough salt in my diet was a factor in some of my ailments: constipation, dehydration, and electrolyte balance. But, I do find that I can take too high a dose of salt and get very bad symptoms. For instance, I was attempting to use salt to alleviate constipation and didn't want to drink too much water before bed; so, I took a large dose of salt with little water and it made my head spin—even laying down.
 

Vins7

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2020
Messages
900
From my experience, I believe that not enough salt in my diet was a factor in some of my ailments: constipation, dehydration, and electrolyte balance. But, I do find that I can take too high a dose of salt and get very bad symptoms. For instance, I was attempting to use salt to alleviate constipation and didn't want to drink too much water before bed; so, I took a large dose of salt with little water and it made my head spin—even laying down.
How could help consuming more salt and drinking less water with constipation?
 

Vins7

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2020
Messages
900
If we need so much salt, why does it taste so bad to put ample salt on food? I seem to need about 15 grams of sodium a day (which is nearly 40 grams of salt) to feel functional but it makes everything I eat taste terrible. Is salt compensating for something else we need?
What do you feel if you don't consume this 15 grams of sodium and how this helps you?
 

Mossy

Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
2,043
How could help consuming more salt and drinking less water with constipation?
My comment was to show that high salt and low water was not good and gave me bad symptoms.
 

philalethes

Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2022
Messages
76
Location
Earth
If we need so much salt, why does it taste so bad to put ample salt on food? I seem to need about 15 grams of sodium a day (which is nearly 40 grams of salt) to feel functional but it makes everything I eat taste terrible. Is salt compensating for something else we need?

Humans need a lot of sodium, but not nearly as much chloride. In fact, the vast majority of health complications that are typically associated with high intake of sodium is actually from high intake of chloride, due to the fact that people tend to consume sodium chloride ("salt"). This is also true for intravenous solutions of saline, which over the years have come to be associated with the exact same problems. It's because of all of the chloride that large amounts of sodium chloride starts tasting bad; in fact, if you pay close attention, you will notice that it starts tasting and smelling almost like chlorine does, if you know how that is from e.g. chlorinated waters like swimming pools.

In our natural environment (the tropical equatorial rainforest) the vast majority of sodium we'd get would be without all that extra chloride; it'd largely be organic sodium salts (i.e. not sodium chloride) as found in various fruits, piths, and even freshwater plants (bonobos in particular have been found to wade into small lakes and ponds to forage for such sodium-rich plants, and note that this is far away from any source of seawater).

So the solution is rather simple, which you've intuitively found out: replace as much sodium chloride as feels good with sodium bicarbonate instead. I've done that for a long time, and use it to cook otherwise acidic foods too, like thoroughly boiled legumes in a solution of sodium bicarbonate (you know it's working when you see carbon dioxide foam start to form and be released from your pot), which is essentially not very different from how masa harina is traditionally prepared, except in that particular case calcium hydroxide is used (but in other traditional cuisines, it's been common to use carbonates of both sodium and potassium, such as e.g. Japanese kansui that's used to make ramen noodles).
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom