Why is salt almost universally referred to as sodium? Salt is sodium chloride. The difference between the compound sodium chloride and the element sodium is vast. Yet on canned food ingredients lists that should at least be scientifically correct, in popular medical discussions about healthy eating, and practically everywhere else sodium is used to mean salt. Sodium will burn on contact with water so you can imagine what it’ll do if you swallow it.
I’ve never heard the sodium/salt reference, I most of the time I see “salt” listed as sodium chloride, and occasionally sodium iodide. Of course there are tons of other salts like the potassium-based ones that people with heart conditions take.
And I’d say technically you do swallow sodium - it dissociates into sodium and chlorine when it hits the water in the food or in the tongue. I assume the fact that it has the counter ion there keeps it from exploding in your mouth.
I think what you are seeing on food labels is a reference to how much of our daily recommended consumption of sodium a food contains. We need to limit sodium intake for reasons like high blood pressure. Sodium in sodium chloride, or sodium iodide, or monosodium glutamate, or various other salts all count. We don’t have to be that worried about our chloride intake, AFAIK.
Since you do consume sodium, and it’s an issue, and they can adjust how much sodium a product has in it, the advice is useful.
They are not suggesting that the sodium is there as an isolated metallic element.
We don’t really need chlorine at all.
As for swallowing sodium, the chloride doesn’t prevent the exploding. Sodium’s reactivity is due to wanting to get rid of an extraneous electron. If it has been part of the compound NaCl the electron has already been lost.
Na –> Na+ +e- is the one that explodes
NaCl –> Na+ + Cl- doesn’t.
What a load of pseudoscientific nonsense.
We do really need chlorine. Like really, reallly, really need it. If I removed the chlorine fom your body you would be dead within seconds. On the bright side you wouldn’t feel any pain because the nerves in your body would spontaneously cease to funtion. If you stopped eating chlorine you would be dead within weeks, though whether from nerve damage, renal failure or some other ailment is hard to say.
We don’t really nered chlorine at all in excatly the same way that we don’t really need oxygen at all. ie we don’t really need it provided we are happy with near instantaneous death as symptom of the lack.
Amongst other ludicrous statments in that article I particularly like the suggetsion that the body doesn’t build anything with chlorine. What does that woman think stomach acid is? Pepsi?
Wow. I’m really really sad that that webpage looks as good as it does. The slick presentation gold plates her bullshit so thoroughly, you’d think the cow was Midas himself.
Someday, I will invent a machine that will allow me to slap people over the internet. I’ll be a millionaire and hailed as a living saint.
Well said. The word “alternative” in the tile bar set off my bullshit meter immediately. Actually reading the page if you have even a basic knowledge of physiology or chemistry is hilarious.
Unfortunately some people don’t hav eneough knowldgel to distinguish slick bullshit from facts. Fortunately we have the SDMB to try to combat the sort of ignorance this woman is pushing.
I think I can say safely that every single paragraph of that webpage contains at least two major factual errors.
Actually, most of us have no need whatsoever to limit our sodium. Our kidneys are amazingly good at regulating our overall electrolyte and water content. Unless you have a preexisting kidney or blood pressure condition, then odds are you’ll be perfectly fine eating far more salt than you think is safe, as long as you drink a lot of water to go along with it.
following the credential links of ‘‘dr’’ hull to her alma mater’s accreditation yields this
http://www.ccnh.edu/about/accreditation.aspx
color me in the you first seats
The simple answer is this:
[Table] Salt is a major source (but far from the only source) of the sodium ion in our diet. Salt, like any strongly ionic compound, doesn’t really exist in solution. It dissociates almost entirely into Na+ and Cl-. the Sodium ion Na+ is what takes part in all biological reactions, but it just so happens that while we have separate names for chlorine and its negative ion ‘chloride’, we use the same word for the element (metal) sodium) and the Na+ ion. Essentially all biological reactions take place in an aqueous environment. We’re mostly water. Sodium the metallic element doesn’t really exist in our bodies, it’a all Na+ ions.
Unfortunately, this confusion is common with elements and positive ions. Unless an element has multiple positive ions with different charges, we tend not to give the ion a separate name (e.g. Na = “sodium” and Na+ = “sodium” because there is only one sodium ion, BUT Fe = iron, Fe++ = “ferrous” and Fe+++ = “ferric”) For historical reasons, we DO tend to assign different names for negative ions: Cl = ‘chlorine’ and Cl- = ‘chloride’. A lot of this came from the early days when we didn’t understand basic chemistry (such as the role of oxygen in forming many compound ions). You can have choride (Cl-) or chlorate (ClO[sub]4[/sub][sup]-[/sup] or hypochlorite (sodium hypochorite is laundry bleach, not salt)
If we only assigned names to positive ions as routinely as we do to negative ones, it’s be a big step towards eliminating the confusion. Though most people don’t really understand the difference between chlorine and chloride, at least the differing names make it easier to talk about it (what’s the difference between sodium and sodium? Well sodium is a metallic element while sodium is an monovalent cation – see? Chaos!) Even scientists who already know the difference inside out try to use Na+ instead of just “sodium” for the sodium ion to avoid confusion.
Basically, the metallic element sodium is rarely what we are talking about, in any practical setting. It’s almost always the sodium ion we’re talking about.
Sorry. Been spending too much time on other boards. I forgot how short the edit window was here. I didn’t get that trimmed down to a pithy palatable size in time.
SDMB is not the place for me to post when tired.
>Basically, the metallic element sodium is rarely what we are talking about, in any practical setting. It’s almost always the sodium ion we’re talking about.
Well, the sodium ion is a form of the element. It’s still the element. You can have sodium without having sodium ions (if you handle it carefully), but you can’t have sodium ions without having the element sodium. It would always be the element unless we transmute it into some other element, for example in a nuclear reactor where radioisotopes are made for nuclear medicine applications, or unless we change its form away from all elements, for example letting it fall into a neutron star. It is pretty rare for humans to come into physical contact with matter that isn’t in the form of an element, except when they are exposed to nuclear radiation, which in terms of mass is typically a fantastically small quantity of matter.
To address the OP…
Salt is never listed as “sodium” on the ingredients, because as the OP says, it isn’t.
It is listed as “sodium” on the nutrition information panel, because most dietary guidelines talk about total sodium intake, as it is the sodium ions that are the important bit. So, for instance, sodium bicarbonate also counts as sodium. Because salt also contains chlorine, the grams of sodium in food is not equal to the grams of salt. So quoting the content as sodium equivalent makes it easier to work out your intake.
In 10 years of ER and ICU nursing I’ve seen 1 patient whose chloride level was far enough off that we had to intervene. I’ve seen many pts whose sodium levels required intervention
So she’s never heard of salt licks?
>odds are you’ll be perfectly fine eating far more salt than you think is safe
>In 10 years of ER and ICU nursing I’ve seen 1 patient whose chloride level was far enough off that we had to intervene. I’ve seen many pts whose sodium levels required intervention
Shame on you, outlierrn, for being taken by the “sodium is bad” nonsense. Understandable, though. Other suckers who have similarly made fools of themselves with their gullibility include the Mayo Clinic, the American Medical Association, the Journal of said association, and the United States National Institute of Health. Thanks to bouv for keeping up the fight against ignorance.
You’ve been trying to eat less sodium - just a pinch of table salt on your baked potato and a dash to your scrambled eggs. The main sources of sodium in the average U.S. diet. But a pinch and a dash can quickly add up to unhealthy levels of sodium, especially when many foods already contain more than enough sodium. Sodium: How to tame your salt habit - Mayo Clinic
AMA calls for measures to reduce sodium intake in U.S. diet - Urges FDA to revoke “generally recognized as safe” status http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/16461.html
The Urgent Need to Reduce Sodium Consumption, September 26 …, the Journal of the American Medical Association jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/298/12/1439
Reduce Salt and Sodium in Your Diet - A key to healthy eating is choosing foods lower in salt and sodium. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/prevent/sodium/sodium.htm
True, but your post contains a lot of errors as well.
I don’t think so. The ion channels are specific for sodium and potassium cations, but anions stay put or move through non-specific channels (yes, there are “chloride channels” but they’re porous towards bromide, iodide, and thiocyanate as well). You could potentially replace all the chloride with an isotonic amount of bromide and function normally.
Hydrochloric acid is fully deprotonated at stomach pH. The H[sub]3[/sub]O[sup]+[/sup] is the essential part - it really doesn’t matter what the counterion is. The counterion could easily be bromide as well.
Licking isn’t eating. :smack:
[QUOTE=Napier]
>In 10 years of ER and ICU nursing I’ve seen 1 patient whose chloride level was far enough off that we had to intervene. I’ve seen many pts whose sodium levels required intervention
Shame on you, outlierrn, for being taken by the “sodium is bad” nonsense. Understandable, though. Other suckers who have similarly made fools of themselves with their gullibility include the Mayo Clinic, the American Medical Association, the Journal of said association, and the United States National Institute of Health. Thanks to bouv for keeping up the fight against ignorance.
QUOTE]
What the FUCK. Did you just call me a foolish gullible sucker? Are you suggesting that my direct experience with patients who are critically ill because of sodium imbalance is nonsense? Did I say sodium is bad? Did I say they were critically ill because their sodium was high? Shame on you Napier, axe grinding is not a synonym for ignorance fighting.
For the record, I was simply relating the relative frequency of sodium related hospital admissions compared to chloride as a reason why dietary sodium is more closely tracked than chloride. Additionally, in the short term, which is all I have EXPERIENCE with, low sodium is more dangerous than high.
Ummm … I assumed Napier was being sarcastic in calling the Mayo, the AMA, and the NIH foolish gullible suckers.
Was I wrong?