SALT

Many people think salt and sodium are one and the same. They’re not. Sodium is a basic chemical element, an electrolyte wee need regulate blood volume, to maintain the acid-balance, and to transmit nerve impulses and muscle contractions.

Salt, on the other hand, is sodium chloride, a simple compound composed of 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride (chloride, like sodium, is essential to life and import for maintaining the acid balance in the blood). Although sodium can also be found in things like baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and mineral water, in our diets, sodium chloride – pure, white table salt – is by far the dominant form consumed.

Currently, the average adult in the United States consumes 4,000 to 6,000 milligrams of sodium daily. Even at the low end, 4,000 milligrams of sodium comes out to about 10 grams of salt, or nearly 2 teaspoons, every day. Considering that the government sets a minimum 9f 500 milligrams for adequacy and the Daily Values in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommends moderate sodium intakes of 2,400 milligrams a daily – found in about 6 grams of salt – we eat much more salt than we need to. Whether high salt intakes are actually bad for us is another issue and one that is surrounded by controversy.

Throughout the centuries, salt has been a valuable commodity. It’s used as a preservative and processing agent in foods as breads, meats, and pickled vegetables. Some foods, like cheese, cannot be formed without salt. Today, its main purpose is as a flavor enhancer, heightening and intensifying natural flavors, at the same time adding its own characteristic flavor – a taste many people crave.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, about 75 percent of the sodium we consume is in the form of processed foods – canned, frozen, and convenience items. The rest of our sodium comes naturally from food (about 15 percent) and as salt (about 10 percent) in its pure form, added during cooking or straight from the shaker once the meal is served.

HIDDEN SALTS

Part of the reason people have so much trouble lowering their salt intake is that many times they just don’t know they’re eating it. Food doesn’t have to taste salty to be high in sodium. These hidden sources of salt are our worse enemies. Take for example the difference between potato chips and corn flakes. Most people assume the potato chips are higher in salt. But a once-ounce serving of potato chips contains about 150 milligrams of sodium; the same size serving of corn flakes has nearly twice that amount. Following are some other surprisingly high sodium foods:

Canned Corn, ½ cup = 285 mgs
Instant Vanilla Pudding, ½ cup from box mix = 410 mgs
Canned tuna fish, 2 ounces (light chunk, packed in water) = 300 mgs
Pizza, frozen, ¼ pie (4.5 ounces) = 770 mgs
Cheese, American, processed, 1 ounce = 410 mgs
English Muffin, 1 = 365 mgs
Ketchup, tomato, 2 tablespoons = 360 mgs
Turkey Hot Dog – 485 mgs

(Figures are based on Jean A. T. Pennington’s Food Values of Portions Commonly Consumed, 16th ed. [Philadelphia, Penn.: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1994).

The Risks of Salt

The paragraphs below are extracted from an article appearing in the New York TImes on May 8, 2001, written
by Jane E. Brody, noted science writer for that newspaper.

"But, as it turns out, hypertension is only one possible consequence of a high-salt diet. A well-documented new
book, "The Salt Solution" by Herb Boynton, Mark F. McCarty and Dr. Richard D. Moore, links our "salt
addiction" not just to high blood pressure and its well-established consequences of heart disease and stroke, but
also to osteoporosis, asthma and kidney disease and possibly ulcers and stomach cancer.

When the body accumulates more sodium than it needs, it excretes it through the kidneys in urine. And in the
process, it also excretes calcium — 23 milligrams of calcium for every teaspoon of extra salt consumed. That's
enough to dissolve 1 percent of skeletal bone a year, or 10 percent over the course of a decade.

This occurs in men as well as in women, and young girls who are forever snacking on salty foods are setting
themselves up for future bone disease. The increase in urinary calcium can also contribute to kidney stones.

The role of salt in asthma is less clear, but a British study has linked the rate of deaths from asthma to the amount
of salt used. And a second study showed that increasing the sodium intake by people with asthma rendered them
more susceptible to allergenic stimuli.

Finally, there is a strong relationship in population studies between the average intake of salt and the rate of
ulcers and stomach cancer. For example, in Korea, where foods are very rich in sodium from salt and soy sauce,
stomach cancer is the leading malignant disease.

Salt, while not a direct carcinogen, appears to promote cancer, perhaps by injuring the stomach lining and/or
aiding the damage done by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the major cause of ulcers."