I’ve been advised by my doctor that my blood pressure is borderline high, and I ought to try to lower my salt intake a little. So far so good. But, nutrition facts only have information on sodium content, which got me thinking - chemically speaking, there are a number of salts, and table salt isn’t just sodium.
Looking through the wiki articles on sodium’s biological role, it seems sodium by itself is the issue, not salt - but are there any other dietary sources of sodium? Secondly, biologically speaking, do non-sodium salts have similar effects to NaCl? Obviously, I’m not going to go replace all my table salt with potassium chloride, I’m just curious here.
Well, I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but last year my annual physical showed I had higher than normal potassium levels, high enough that they were borderline Serious Business. The doctor was extremely concerned, checked me out for a number of possible Bad Things, then cautioned me very strongly that I was NOT to have, under ANY circumstances, any “potassium chloride” salt substitutes. Nada. Absolutely NONE.
On the other hand, as my blood pressure was on the low side of normal and I worked outside in hot weather, I was free to consume as much sodium chloride as I desired.
So… yes, different salts can, I suppose, have different effects in a person.
Yes, sodium is the issue, not salt. There are other dietary sources of sodium apart from sodium chloride, but don’t worry about that. You cannot and you should not cut all sodium out of your diet. It is an essential nutrient. You will die if you do not get any of it, although there is no real danger of that because it is found in all foods, as it is an essential element in all living things.
When your doctor says cut down on salt he does not mean avoid all salts (impossible) or even attempt to attempt to cut sodium salts out altogether: he means cut down on the amount of salt (sodium chloride) you use, sprinkled on your food as a condiment or in cooking, and avoid foods with a lot of salt added to them, like potato chips and pretzels.
Although it is possible to replace some of the sodium chloride you use with potassium chloride, you should not go overboard with that either. Potassium is also an essential nutrient, found in all foodstuffs, but you need less of it than you do of sodium, and too much potassium will kill you a lot quicker than too much sodium will. Also, if used more than quite sparingly it can taste quite nasty.
It is also perhaps worth mentioning that there is considerable doubt over whether cutting down sodium intake really helps much in lowering blood pressure in most people.
1.38 grams of NaCN, and 1.65 grams of NaCl both contain 1 gram of sodium.
That’s not much salt for a person to ingest, but that dose of Sodium Cyanide would likely prove fatal.
One non-table salt and very common source of sodium is monosodium glutamate. At one time (not sure if it still is) this was marketed as the meat tenderizer/flavor enhancer Ac`cent. In addition to the sources listed in the Wikipedia article, it or a derivative is very common in Cantonese cooking, and to some extent in other East Asian cuisines.
I find it odd that people focus on the table salt, when the majority of sodium content comes from processed foods. (Cite) If you make your food at home, you likely can get food that tastes just as salty without anywhere near as much sodium in it.
Well, in my case it’s because I process a lot of my own foods. Homemade sausage, olives, and sauerkraut all use a fair amount of salt. I was surprised at how much my go-to bread recipe calls for, even. A lot of home-preserved foods use salt as the preservative, especially meats. And since I know all the ingredients, it got me thinking about salt vs. sodium.
This needs a caveat. There are some cases when cut out salt really does mean “cut out every source of table salt that you can find, including bread”. But if you are in a situation where that is true, you probably know about it, because you are dealing with something much more serious, and this is just one step of many.
This thread links to an article that says there’s almost no evidence linking salt/sodium to high blood pressure. (Post 9. There are lots of other links in the thread.
Well, certainly not when the advice is occasioned by “borderline high” blood pressure, as in the OP.
I am not sure what conditions you have in mind here - I suppose there may be some serious conditions that necessitate drastically lowering sodium intake temporarily - but, like I said, all foods contain sodium (and much of it in the form of chloride, although that is not really relevant) because it is an element essential to all known life, present in every living cell. The only way to avoid it altogether would be to eat a completely synthetic diet, and you could not stay alive on any such completely sodium free diet for very long.
Post 9 has two links stating that higher intake of slat was bad for you. Which post links to studies not finding a link between blood pressure and salt?