11 ms·

Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

110 points by chmaynard 11y ago

hardlianotion 11y ago
"the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook." Or a sign that the green lines were drawn first, and test red and blue overlaid.
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  Agreed. This is a terrible graphic. I have no idea what's going on for any data point except the few on the edges.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Was about to post the same. It's hard to continue reading the article when the basic premise is so obviously flawed.
- ajholyoake 11y ago
  This could have been improved by clustering using a d3-like force layout - The current node layout obfuscates the graph terribly!
- yk 11y ago
  Came here to mention that. Additionally these findings are easily explained if we assume that salt has some positive and some negative effects occurring in different parts of the body. Say salt has some positive effects for the liver and negative effects for the heart, then a paper on liver disease will mostly cite positive studies about salt, that is it cites studies on the liver, and a paper on heart diseases will cite mostly negative.
jbb555 11y ago
It seems to me that in otherwise healthy people, they are able to deal with excess salt by getting rid of it, but when people have issues they are unable to do so as efficiently and that's when salt is bad.
- jobu 11y ago
  There was one recent study that seemed to indicate exactly this, but I can't find it right now. As I recall they found that salt exacerbated inflammation related to hypertension, but found no difference in healthy individuals.
Kwastie 11y ago
Why does a respectable news outlet/paper like the Washington Post lower itself to clickbait titles.. I don't get it.
- Profan 11y ago
  Titles like "Scientists can't decide" always grate on me. Almost as bad as "Science has found out x!".
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Emotional titles grate me this not so much. I hate the You will be Amazed when ... I think I highly prefer to read "Scientist can't decide" because that means there is an interesting story/data to look at normally. I also find it a lot more honest then saying "Scientist" when there is equal amount of doubt in an article.
  - static_noise 11y ago
    They should hold a global meeting and call in a vote to determine the definitive reality of the matter.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Because clickbait leads to higher click through rate and view and thus income. The consumer decides, simple as.
oniony 11y ago
At least the we can all agree that salt is good for our passwords.
- amist 11y ago
  Just in case they are random.
shiftoutbox 11y ago
The fact that you can eat a lot of salt, with out instant harm , always makes people think twice on reports like this . Same is true with sugar reports and fat as well . So what is this a vegan conspiracy to make us all go veg ! Unlikely , but consumers should Recognize that consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results . Try This rule as an example , many people like olive oil , many people say eating lots of olive oil is good for you . No one equates this as drinking a pint of olive oil as a good idea , nor eating 1/7 of that a day for a week . The bigger issue with this study is how pervasive doctored food has become . Yesterday Bloomberg news had a story how Parmesan and other grated hard Italian cheeses have become regularly doctored with wood pulp as a filler . Once wools pulp tastes like well , wood , one would expect salt to be added t this product to cover the wood content . A similar analogy can be made with regards to olive oils . Many providers filter and treat lower quality oil to make it appear as a higher quality product . It's not as bad as Chinese "Gutter Oil" but the fact that we have food health studies with out super strict food quality enforcement, in my humble opinion leads the biased reports or studies with flawed data .
- JumpCrisscross 11y ago
  > consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results The whole point of these studies is to define the line between "too much", "in moderation", and "not enough". Saying "everything in moderation" is the equivalent of answering "when should I start worrying about my radiation dose" with "when it's too much". Technically correct, practically useless.
  - shiftoutbox 11y ago
    So say the question is alcohol consumption. Science knows the ld50 for alcohol . Science could say 1 drink a week is too much for you . However much of that logic deals with the "average man" not "you" . Your level of moderation could be calculated by direct observation of you, but I doubt anyone would stand for that sort of nonsense in today's science . So how much salt , sugar , or fat is to much ? It depends on many factors , much like how much alcohol you can consume before you "feel intoxicated" . There is a legal standard, in many countries,for how much alcohol you can have in your system before you are a burden on the state . Ie are you so dunk you will crash your car and cause harm to your self and to others or property... Back to my point you may not fit the legal parameters for being "too drunk to drive" because you can drink 10 beers before "you" feel drunk or the inverse one beer and you need a nap . Again this is based on averages as well as a social standard of acceptability on what we as a community governing the law feels is acceptable . So how does this relate to salt,fat, or sugar . It's quite simple it's too much salt in your diet does not make you potential harm your self or others in the short term like alcohol would . The same could be said about sugar , and fat . To be honest I should say something like I eat 2 lbs of sugar coated bacon each day with a fifth of bourbon and I am well over 85 . But in any case you will vote be down either way .
Ensorceled 11y ago
I think a huge problem, is that some of the guidelines are insanely low and difficult to hit without serious diet modifications. A couple of years ago, I tried to stick to the Canadian RDA for salt and found it near impossible even on a whole food diet. If you engage in strenuous exercise or in manual labour, they are dangerously low. A couple of recent studies are pointing to this problem with the Health Canada Guidelines http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_are_too_low_studies_show.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_a... So studies that compare people at or near the RDA with people who are over the RDA are essentially comparing vegans, vegetarians and other people are very closely monitoring their diet to the general population.
- tetraodonpuffer 11y ago
  Honestly given that due to health reasons I have to stick to ~500mg of sodium a day, and have been for years with no adverse effects, I don't consider the 1,500mg Canadian guidelines that low. I do find it funny though that, for example, the Canadian guidelines are 1,500mg while the Italian ones are at 2,400 (and if you look at packaged foods sometimes the percentages seem to be based on 4,000mg) The only way for me to do it is to be completely whole foods (the only "packaged" food I eat is canned crushed tomatoes, and only a very specific brand with absolutely no sodium added). It is obviously annoying not to be able to eat bread anymore, or to eat out, or to be able to do air travel without starving (unfortunately airlines nowadays seem to not serve full fruit meals, so I have to make do with just the little square box of salad and the one of fruit, which on an 8 hour flight is not fun) but what can you do. This said having to severely limit your sodium makes you realize just how much of our industry relationships seem to be predicated on eating out, from interviews, to work get togethers and so on, this makes me think that likely any future job I will have will have to be fully remote because flying somewhere for an all day interview would be quite difficult to figure out food-wise.
  - liveoneggs 11y ago
    bread with no or very low sodium exists but usually in the freezer section. http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low-sodium-sprouted-whole-grain-bread http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low-sod...
known 11y ago
UL is 3600 mg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
static_noise 11y ago
I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process. Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what causes problems. Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you - else we would have found out already.
- patatino 11y ago
  I tried to inform myself about nutrition but at this point I have still no idea what is best. Right now I'm following your advice, avoid highly processed food and otherwise listen to my body.
  - tgb29 11y ago
    Same here. I recently cut sugar and bread products and I experienced random dizziness. I was eating plenty of fruit and I was eating natural sugars. I decided to experiment one day; had 4 donuts, bread and butter, and my body felt better. Now the plan is to avoid processed, avoid preservatives, and move towards more natural and organic. I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals.
    - kefka 11y ago
      My wife and I have this very problem. Prior to my diabetes assessment, things like NoodleTown and pasta places would fill her right up. Me? I'd be gnawing my hand off if I went there, because I'd be hungrier 20 mins later than had I not gone there at all. But now with diagnosed T2 diabetes, that makes sense. I process carbs very badly, and spirals into a "process carbs into fat quickly, and get hungrier, all the while jack blood sugar". Of course, high fat and high protein diet has went very well for me. I'm not hungry like I used to be, I've lost 40 lbs since the start, and I just feel better.
    - jimrandomh 11y ago
malsun 11y ago
I think it's better to enjoy life than worry about nutritional guidelines, which might extend our time in some retirement home. Especially something that's been in our diet for a long time. Just don't overdo it.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Looking after your health can be an important component of being able to enjoy life well before the retirement home. Plenty of people are having heart attacks and strokes before age 60, before age 50.
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  My in-laws, who have always regularly exercised and eat healthy are 10 years older but have a much higher quality of life than my parents who have done neither. It's about staying out of the retirement home for as long as possible not how long you're there before you die.
Shivetya 11y ago
Being an avid cook I have a hard time with believing that salt is the evil some claim it is. It has always been with us, it is in so many recipes and many don't work without it. It is the basis for brine solutions which produce make even some of the worst cuts of meat palatable and take good pieces and makes them better. I am more of the idea that the sedentary lifestyle of many and lack of water as the go to drink for a lot of people combined with the excess of salt in snacks as a triple whammy that exaggerates salt's place on some people's lists of it being bad.
- itchyouch 11y ago
  One thing to consider is pre-made processed food has tons of sodium in them to bring out taste due to the absorption of salt. When I cook for myself, I use a fraction of the salt that a pre-made equivalent normally ships with. I recall reading a blurb about how when processed foods don't do well in taste-testing research panels, they are instructed to dump in the sodium, with the result of positive results to follow up panels.
kozukumi 11y ago
Does it taste nice? That means it probably causes cancer. I jest but it does seem like everything nice either causes heart disease and/or cancer.
- dEnigma 11y ago
  Even vitamins cause cancer[1]. My personal guess is that it is far more harmful to you to worry too much about what you eat, than eating a little bit too much of something "bad", see Nocebo-effect[2] and other psychosomatic factors. [1] https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer-risk/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer-ris... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
drumttocs8 11y ago
Salt and other nutrients are bad if you're sedentary...
Mikeb85 11y ago
The problem is that salt (and other minerals) is required to live. But we eat too much of everything (including salt). It's not the salt that's killing us, it's the shitty diet, too-large portions, and lack of exercise. If we ate reasonable portions of well-prepared meals the salt wouldn't be a big deal. But no, instead we eat extra large portions of everything, way too much meat, starch, fat and salt, so all these food items get a bad rap because we can't simply moderate ourselves...
- jerf 11y ago
  Why do you think you know that? Since the answer is basically either A: "no good reason" or B: "I believe I have science on my side", this really isn't a good response to an article about how controversial the science is. Which science do you think you have? Why is it better than the other half of the science? This is a generic reply to everybody jumping up to explain what the truth really is.
  - darkerside 11y ago
    I agree that it's not a response that is constructive to the science at hand, but it's a fine response for an individual. Unless you want to obsess over having the perfect diet, you can have a diet that is 80% healthy with 20% of the focus if you just diversify your diet across many different sources. The only thing we really know about scientific knowledge is that it will continue to evolve.
  - narag 11y ago
    Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C? Of course this point has the same problem of lacking details. But recognizing "modern food" as a culprit is actually less overeaching than putting the blame on a single substance that has been used for centuries.
    - jerf 11y ago
      "Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?" No; that would fall under "no good reason". Are you sure people "ate less"? Given that we (think we) know that people of the past were also more active (although history is definitely on your side for that one), and how much more active people need to eat to sustain their activity, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that people in the past consumed more calories than the average American. You'd need to do quite a bit of science to nail this down. Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B. It's hard to escape from needing to have done science to really know what the problem is, and it's also hard to escape from the fact that all the science is really a great deal less clear than we've been led to believe by our government and public health organizations. It's clear we have problems; it's way less clear what the cause truly is. It also is reasonable to observe that you can "eat better" with less processed food, etc., and exercise is reasonably well established as helping, but why, exactly? We may speak in English of that as being one or two changes, but it's not; it's hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more changes, all at once. Which of them are relevant, and exactly how? Those questions are much less well answered. It also doesn't necessarily matter to you personally in the end. But it does mean that confident declarations about what is "really" the cause are poorly supported right now on all fronts. I've been looking at this for many years too, and just about the only conclusions I've come to are A: less processed does seem better B: exercise does seem to be important but it's surprising how much debate about which types of exercise are good for what is still happening, again, despite what we've been led to believe and C: the consensus I was taught growing up in the 1980s is dead wrong in almost (but not quite) every detail, but that doesn't mean I know what is right. There are still entire massive dimensions poorly explored by science; for instance, go look up the science on "intermittent fasting". One of the first things you ram into is that while there have been several studies on it, they all use the exact same schedule, which happens to be fairly unrealistic. No exploration of the space as a whole, just this one point, sampled over and over again. Does the schedule of your food intake matter? What's the best one? Science very nearly just shrugs at this question. Who knows what else we're missing?
tokenadult 11y ago
The article kindly submitted here is interesting. Like more and more recent articles about science in the popular press, this article, which reports on a large analysis of previously published papers on salt in the human diet, digs into the process of science to look at how (or even whether) scientists learn from one another by citing the previously published papers on the same topic. The article's key point, just below a graphic that is criticized in several previous comments here, is "Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than to cite papers drawing a different conclusion." In other words, scientists working on the issue of how much salt in the human diet is too much are largely talking past one another, and not collaboratively seeking truth. The article further reports, "Trinquart and his colleagues also turned up another factor that might pose even more profound problems in the salt research. It appears scientists could not even agree on what ought to be counted as evidence." Human nutrition studies are notoriously difficult because it is very hard to measure exactly what a study subject eats, especially a nutrient like salt that occurs as a hidden ingredient in wildly varying doses in many foods. So correct measurement of the initial study data is hard to get right in studies about salt. But if scientists are still not in consensus about what to look at as endpoints to tell if salt is helpful or harmful in different doses, it will be a long time before we can individualize the research or do anything else suggested in the comments already posted in this thread.
- jarcane 11y ago
  I was recently prescribed beta blockers by my doctor, due to ongoing heart and blood pressure issues brought on by severe stress anxiety. I also have asthma. It's a mild case, and I don't need an inhaler or any medication for it, just get pretty short on breath under heavy exercise. Now, accumulated medical wisdom is that beta blockers are bad for asthmatics. They supposedly shorten air intake, and can even be fatal, especially in severe cases. NHS guidelines in the UK recommend against prescribing them to asthmatics and other similar lung conditions. But ... see it turns out this wisdom basically goes back to some case reviews from back in the 70s, of patients having reactions to proplanolol, the first beta blocker released to market. But recent reviews of the research shows that's pretty much all there's ever been: case studies. The only actual experimental trials done on this had significant methodological issues (one of them didn't even have a control group!), leaving little more than just a pile of what amounts to anecdotal evidence, involving two conditions (heart and lung) that have significant chance of comorbidity anyway. On top of that, even most of that research is all based on the original "nonselective" kind of beta blockers, while initial research with the modern "selective" variety indicates they may even help. Even more fun is that the beta-agonists sometimes prescribed as an alternative to blockers, may themselves have a reaction with asthma ... The end result is that in nearly 50 years of beta blockers being on market, no one medical professional actually seems to have any idea whether they're good or bad for asthma, but the "wisdom" gets passed down all the same ... And meanwhile I've got a bottle of them on my desk. I'm not a doctor, or a pharmaceutical scientist, and if they don't know if it's safe for me to take them or not, how in fuck am I supposed to make that choice?
denzil_correa 11y ago
WaPo titles are sounding more like Buzzfeed or Quartz.
darkerside 11y ago
In the image showing how polarized research has become, does the yellow or green category include "Inconclusive citing supportive and/or contradictory"? I would suspect as much, otherwise the image ends up being quite misleading, but I didn't see any confirmation in the article.
jostmey 11y ago
I think this speaks more about a broken research system than it does about the challenges in determining how bad excess salt is on our health.
vzip 11y ago
Remove the sugar and starches from your diet, and be physically active. You'll need ample salt, maybe even more than you'd expect.
- kazinator 11y ago
  I eat low sodium, cycle 70 miles a week, run 30, and sweat buckets. I'm fine. When I go traveling, I end up eating out a lot due to circumstances. The sodium intake bloats up the skin, yowzers! My wedding band gets stuck on my finger, when normally it slides off easily, and I lose a bit of definition. I hate how that looks and feels.
  - undersuit 11y ago
    Body builders will maintain high sodium levels until just before a competition, whereupon they stop consuming sodium and their water retention decreases granting them extra temporary muscle definition.
kazinator 11y ago
If you consciously reduce your salt, it is probably good for your health. This is not necessarily because of the salt, but because reducing your salt intake pretty much requires preparing your own food from unprocessed ingredients, rather than eating out or consuming processed food (whose sodium levels tend to be high, and not controllable by you). A high sodium intake is widely believed to be unhealthy. Whether that is actually true or not, those who prepare high sodium food basically show that they don't give a shit about health.
jdnier 11y ago
I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a-choice http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a... Another salt video looking at conflicts of interest: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake-up-the-salt-debate/ http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake...
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  In case someone doesnt want to watch the videos: the amount of sodium discussed in the first video as "normal" is <1g/day.
logfromblammo 11y ago
In lieu of any conclusive evidence that has percolated down to the mainstream news media, I'm just going to operate under the entirely baseless hypothesis that the human body can tolerate any amount of sodium above its absolute minimum required for basic functioning, provided that it is consumed within a certain range of proportions with potassium, calcium, magnesium, and water. I suspect that the mineral content of seawater diluted to 1.5% salinity (from 3.5%) would have a bit too much sodium, and not enough potassium, but would otherwise be safe to consume in any quantity. Needless to say, testing this hypothesis on humans might raise a few ethical concerns. Finding enough people who already drink nothing but diluted seawater to claim significance might also prove difficult.
browseatwork 11y ago
I wonder to what extent this can be explained by varying individual responses to salt. Maybe none- definitely possible. The recent study showing blood sugar response varied widely amongst individuals to the same foods, I wonder if scientists will arrive at that conclusion for salt. http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar-levels-in-response-to-foods-are-highly-individual http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar-lev...
Trumpitron 11y ago
I think the core issue is that biology doesn't know as much as the media likes to claim it does. I mean read this: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf052915.php#.VWzrrUM7T6Y.mailto http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf05291.... If true, this effectively invalidates nearly all previous research regarding the safety of anything we inject into our blood stream because they may in fact impact the brain. Many people have a choice to make. Although the scientific community may make a consistently supported claim about something does not mean that something will turn out to be true. Creating a near-perfect predictive model of the human body for doctors to use is about as complex a task as reverse engineering a UFO (actually reverse engineering an alien space craft is still probably more simple). They are going to make mistakes along the way. So you are faced with a choice. Either take a risk with incomplete knowledge that something man made will not be harmful in the long term or keep doing most of the same stuff that we've been doing for centuries that has a known, if imperfect, outcome. Yes there are a lot of things can will probably kill you first, but does that mean you should continue to assume more risk on the claim that a predictive model that the scientific community generally endorses is correct enough to avoid harm? Then again "organic" can mean a lot of things and the lack of regulation and quality control can and has made things worse on the other end. Just because it has the label "USDA Organic" doesn't mean that the USDA or FDA has done the job you think it does. There is risk and uncertainty either way.

110 points by chmaynard 11y ago

"the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook." Or a sign that the green lines were drawn first, and test red and blue overlaid.

Ensorceled 11y ago
Agreed. This is a terrible graphic. I have no idea what's going on for any data point except the few on the edges.
IshKebab 11y ago
Was about to post the same. It's hard to continue reading the article when the basic premise is so obviously flawed.
ajholyoake 11y ago
This could have been improved by clustering using a d3-like force layout - The current node layout obfuscates the graph terribly!
yk 11y ago
Came here to mention that. Additionally these findings are easily explained if we assume that salt has some positive and some negative effects occurring in different parts of the body. Say salt has some positive effects for the liver and negative effects for the heart, then a paper on liver disease will mostly cite positive studies about salt, that is it cites studies on the liver, and a paper on heart diseases will cite mostly negative.

jbb555 11y ago

It seems to me that in otherwise healthy people, they are able to deal with excess salt by getting rid of it, but when people have issues they are unable to do so as efficiently and that's when salt is bad.

jobu 11y ago
There was one recent study that seemed to indicate exactly this, but I can't find it right now. As I recall they found that salt exacerbated inflammation related to hypertension, but found no difference in healthy individuals.

Kwastie 11y ago

Why does a respectable news outlet/paper like the Washington Post lower itself to clickbait titles.. I don't get it.

Profan 11y ago
Titles like "Scientists can't decide" always grate on me. Almost as bad as "Science has found out x!".
- baldfat 11y ago
  Emotional titles grate me this not so much. I hate the You will be Amazed when ... I think I highly prefer to read "Scientist can't decide" because that means there is an interesting story/data to look at normally. I also find it a lot more honest then saying "Scientist" when there is equal amount of doubt in an article.
- static_noise 11y ago
  They should hold a global meeting and call in a vote to determine the definitive reality of the matter.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Because clickbait leads to higher click through rate and view and thus income. The consumer decides, simple as.

oniony 11y ago

At least the we can all agree that salt is good for our passwords.

amist 11y ago
Just in case they are random.

shiftoutbox 11y ago

The fact that you can eat a lot of salt, with out instant harm , always makes people think twice on reports like this . Same is true with sugar reports and fat as well . So what is this a vegan conspiracy to make us all go veg ! Unlikely , but consumers should Recognize that consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results . Try This rule as an example , many people like olive oil , many people say eating lots of olive oil is good for you . No one equates this as drinking a pint of olive oil as a good idea , nor eating 1/7 of that a day for a week . The bigger issue with this study is how pervasive doctored food has become . Yesterday Bloomberg news had a story how Parmesan and other grated hard Italian cheeses have become regularly doctored with wood pulp as a filler . Once wools pulp tastes like well , wood , one would expect salt to be added t this product to cover the wood content . A similar analogy can be made with regards to olive oils . Many providers filter and treat lower quality oil to make it appear as a higher quality product . It's not as bad as Chinese "Gutter Oil" but the fact that we have food health studies with out super strict food quality enforcement, in my humble opinion leads the biased reports or studies with flawed data .

JumpCrisscross 11y ago
> consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results The whole point of these studies is to define the line between "too much", "in moderation", and "not enough". Saying "everything in moderation" is the equivalent of answering "when should I start worrying about my radiation dose" with "when it's too much". Technically correct, practically useless.
- shiftoutbox 11y ago
  So say the question is alcohol consumption. Science knows the ld50 for alcohol . Science could say 1 drink a week is too much for you . However much of that logic deals with the "average man" not "you" . Your level of moderation could be calculated by direct observation of you, but I doubt anyone would stand for that sort of nonsense in today's science . So how much salt , sugar , or fat is to much ? It depends on many factors , much like how much alcohol you can consume before you "feel intoxicated" . There is a legal standard, in many countries,for how much alcohol you can have in your system before you are a burden on the state . Ie are you so dunk you will crash your car and cause harm to your self and to others or property... Back to my point you may not fit the legal parameters for being "too drunk to drive" because you can drink 10 beers before "you" feel drunk or the inverse one beer and you need a nap . Again this is based on averages as well as a social standard of acceptability on what we as a community governing the law feels is acceptable . So how does this relate to salt,fat, or sugar . It's quite simple it's too much salt in your diet does not make you potential harm your self or others in the short term like alcohol would . The same could be said about sugar , and fat . To be honest I should say something like I eat 2 lbs of sugar coated bacon each day with a fifth of bourbon and I am well over 85 . But in any case you will vote be down either way .

Ensorceled 11y ago

I think a huge problem, is that some of the guidelines are insanely low and difficult to hit without serious diet modifications. A couple of years ago, I tried to stick to the Canadian RDA for salt and found it near impossible even on a whole food diet. If you engage in strenuous exercise or in manual labour, they are dangerously low. A couple of recent studies are pointing to this problem with the Health Canada Guidelines http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_are_too_low_studies_show.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_a... So studies that compare people at or near the RDA with people who are over the RDA are essentially comparing vegans, vegetarians and other people are very closely monitoring their diet to the general population.

tetraodonpuffer 11y ago
Honestly given that due to health reasons I have to stick to ~500mg of sodium a day, and have been for years with no adverse effects, I don't consider the 1,500mg Canadian guidelines that low. I do find it funny though that, for example, the Canadian guidelines are 1,500mg while the Italian ones are at 2,400 (and if you look at packaged foods sometimes the percentages seem to be based on 4,000mg) The only way for me to do it is to be completely whole foods (the only "packaged" food I eat is canned crushed tomatoes, and only a very specific brand with absolutely no sodium added). It is obviously annoying not to be able to eat bread anymore, or to eat out, or to be able to do air travel without starving (unfortunately airlines nowadays seem to not serve full fruit meals, so I have to make do with just the little square box of salad and the one of fruit, which on an 8 hour flight is not fun) but what can you do. This said having to severely limit your sodium makes you realize just how much of our industry relationships seem to be predicated on eating out, from interviews, to work get togethers and so on, this makes me think that likely any future job I will have will have to be fully remote because flying somewhere for an all day interview would be quite difficult to figure out food-wise.
- liveoneggs 11y ago
  bread with no or very low sodium exists but usually in the freezer section. http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low-sodium-sprouted-whole-grain-bread http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low-sod...

known 11y ago

UL is 3600 mg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

static_noise 11y ago

I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process. Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what causes problems. Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you - else we would have found out already.

patatino 11y ago
I tried to inform myself about nutrition but at this point I have still no idea what is best. Right now I'm following your advice, avoid highly processed food and otherwise listen to my body.
- tgb29 11y ago
  Same here. I recently cut sugar and bread products and I experienced random dizziness. I was eating plenty of fruit and I was eating natural sugars. I decided to experiment one day; had 4 donuts, bread and butter, and my body felt better. Now the plan is to avoid processed, avoid preservatives, and move towards more natural and organic. I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals.
  - kefka 11y ago
    My wife and I have this very problem. Prior to my diabetes assessment, things like NoodleTown and pasta places would fill her right up. Me? I'd be gnawing my hand off if I went there, because I'd be hungrier 20 mins later than had I not gone there at all. But now with diagnosed T2 diabetes, that makes sense. I process carbs very badly, and spirals into a "process carbs into fat quickly, and get hungrier, all the while jack blood sugar". Of course, high fat and high protein diet has went very well for me. I'm not hungry like I used to be, I've lost 40 lbs since the start, and I just feel better.
  - jimrandomh 11y ago

malsun 11y ago

I think it's better to enjoy life than worry about nutritional guidelines, which might extend our time in some retirement home. Especially something that's been in our diet for a long time. Just don't overdo it.

maxerickson 11y ago
Looking after your health can be an important component of being able to enjoy life well before the retirement home. Plenty of people are having heart attacks and strokes before age 60, before age 50.
Ensorceled 11y ago
My in-laws, who have always regularly exercised and eat healthy are 10 years older but have a much higher quality of life than my parents who have done neither. It's about staying out of the retirement home for as long as possible not how long you're there before you die.

Shivetya 11y ago

Being an avid cook I have a hard time with believing that salt is the evil some claim it is. It has always been with us, it is in so many recipes and many don't work without it. It is the basis for brine solutions which produce make even some of the worst cuts of meat palatable and take good pieces and makes them better. I am more of the idea that the sedentary lifestyle of many and lack of water as the go to drink for a lot of people combined with the excess of salt in snacks as a triple whammy that exaggerates salt's place on some people's lists of it being bad.

itchyouch 11y ago
One thing to consider is pre-made processed food has tons of sodium in them to bring out taste due to the absorption of salt. When I cook for myself, I use a fraction of the salt that a pre-made equivalent normally ships with. I recall reading a blurb about how when processed foods don't do well in taste-testing research panels, they are instructed to dump in the sodium, with the result of positive results to follow up panels.

kozukumi 11y ago

Does it taste nice? That means it probably causes cancer. I jest but it does seem like everything nice either causes heart disease and/or cancer.

dEnigma 11y ago
Even vitamins cause cancer[1]. My personal guess is that it is far more harmful to you to worry too much about what you eat, than eating a little bit too much of something "bad", see Nocebo-effect[2] and other psychosomatic factors. [1] https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer-risk/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer-ris... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

drumttocs8 11y ago

Salt and other nutrients are bad if you're sedentary...

Mikeb85 11y ago

The problem is that salt (and other minerals) is required to live. But we eat too much of everything (including salt). It's not the salt that's killing us, it's the shitty diet, too-large portions, and lack of exercise. If we ate reasonable portions of well-prepared meals the salt wouldn't be a big deal. But no, instead we eat extra large portions of everything, way too much meat, starch, fat and salt, so all these food items get a bad rap because we can't simply moderate ourselves...

jerf 11y ago
Why do you think you know that? Since the answer is basically either A: "no good reason" or B: "I believe I have science on my side", this really isn't a good response to an article about how controversial the science is. Which science do you think you have? Why is it better than the other half of the science? This is a generic reply to everybody jumping up to explain what the truth really is.
- darkerside 11y ago
  I agree that it's not a response that is constructive to the science at hand, but it's a fine response for an individual. Unless you want to obsess over having the perfect diet, you can have a diet that is 80% healthy with 20% of the focus if you just diversify your diet across many different sources. The only thing we really know about scientific knowledge is that it will continue to evolve.
- narag 11y ago
  Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C? Of course this point has the same problem of lacking details. But recognizing "modern food" as a culprit is actually less overeaching than putting the blame on a single substance that has been used for centuries.
  - jerf 11y ago
    "Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?" No; that would fall under "no good reason". Are you sure people "ate less"? Given that we (think we) know that people of the past were also more active (although history is definitely on your side for that one), and how much more active people need to eat to sustain their activity, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that people in the past consumed more calories than the average American. You'd need to do quite a bit of science to nail this down. Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B. It's hard to escape from needing to have done science to really know what the problem is, and it's also hard to escape from the fact that all the science is really a great deal less clear than we've been led to believe by our government and public health organizations. It's clear we have problems; it's way less clear what the cause truly is. It also is reasonable to observe that you can "eat better" with less processed food, etc., and exercise is reasonably well established as helping, but why, exactly? We may speak in English of that as being one or two changes, but it's not; it's hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more changes, all at once. Which of them are relevant, and exactly how? Those questions are much less well answered. It also doesn't necessarily matter to you personally in the end. But it does mean that confident declarations about what is "really" the cause are poorly supported right now on all fronts. I've been looking at this for many years too, and just about the only conclusions I've come to are A: less processed does seem better B: exercise does seem to be important but it's surprising how much debate about which types of exercise are good for what is still happening, again, despite what we've been led to believe and C: the consensus I was taught growing up in the 1980s is dead wrong in almost (but not quite) every detail, but that doesn't mean I know what is right. There are still entire massive dimensions poorly explored by science; for instance, go look up the science on "intermittent fasting". One of the first things you ram into is that while there have been several studies on it, they all use the exact same schedule, which happens to be fairly unrealistic. No exploration of the space as a whole, just this one point, sampled over and over again. Does the schedule of your food intake matter? What's the best one? Science very nearly just shrugs at this question. Who knows what else we're missing?

tokenadult 11y ago

The article kindly submitted here is interesting. Like more and more recent articles about science in the popular press, this article, which reports on a large analysis of previously published papers on salt in the human diet, digs into the process of science to look at how (or even whether) scientists learn from one another by citing the previously published papers on the same topic. The article's key point, just below a graphic that is criticized in several previous comments here, is "Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than to cite papers drawing a different conclusion." In other words, scientists working on the issue of how much salt in the human diet is too much are largely talking past one another, and not collaboratively seeking truth. The article further reports, "Trinquart and his colleagues also turned up another factor that might pose even more profound problems in the salt research. It appears scientists could not even agree on what ought to be counted as evidence." Human nutrition studies are notoriously difficult because it is very hard to measure exactly what a study subject eats, especially a nutrient like salt that occurs as a hidden ingredient in wildly varying doses in many foods. So correct measurement of the initial study data is hard to get right in studies about salt. But if scientists are still not in consensus about what to look at as endpoints to tell if salt is helpful or harmful in different doses, it will be a long time before we can individualize the research or do anything else suggested in the comments already posted in this thread.

jarcane 11y ago
I was recently prescribed beta blockers by my doctor, due to ongoing heart and blood pressure issues brought on by severe stress anxiety. I also have asthma. It's a mild case, and I don't need an inhaler or any medication for it, just get pretty short on breath under heavy exercise. Now, accumulated medical wisdom is that beta blockers are bad for asthmatics. They supposedly shorten air intake, and can even be fatal, especially in severe cases. NHS guidelines in the UK recommend against prescribing them to asthmatics and other similar lung conditions. But ... see it turns out this wisdom basically goes back to some case reviews from back in the 70s, of patients having reactions to proplanolol, the first beta blocker released to market. But recent reviews of the research shows that's pretty much all there's ever been: case studies. The only actual experimental trials done on this had significant methodological issues (one of them didn't even have a control group!), leaving little more than just a pile of what amounts to anecdotal evidence, involving two conditions (heart and lung) that have significant chance of comorbidity anyway. On top of that, even most of that research is all based on the original "nonselective" kind of beta blockers, while initial research with the modern "selective" variety indicates they may even help. Even more fun is that the beta-agonists sometimes prescribed as an alternative to blockers, may themselves have a reaction with asthma ... The end result is that in nearly 50 years of beta blockers being on market, no one medical professional actually seems to have any idea whether they're good or bad for asthma, but the "wisdom" gets passed down all the same ... And meanwhile I've got a bottle of them on my desk. I'm not a doctor, or a pharmaceutical scientist, and if they don't know if it's safe for me to take them or not, how in fuck am I supposed to make that choice?

denzil_correa 11y ago

WaPo titles are sounding more like Buzzfeed or Quartz.

darkerside 11y ago

In the image showing how polarized research has become, does the yellow or green category include "Inconclusive citing supportive and/or contradictory"? I would suspect as much, otherwise the image ends up being quite misleading, but I didn't see any confirmation in the article.

jostmey 11y ago

I think this speaks more about a broken research system than it does about the challenges in determining how bad excess salt is on our health.

vzip 11y ago

Remove the sugar and starches from your diet, and be physically active. You'll need ample salt, maybe even more than you'd expect.

kazinator 11y ago
I eat low sodium, cycle 70 miles a week, run 30, and sweat buckets. I'm fine. When I go traveling, I end up eating out a lot due to circumstances. The sodium intake bloats up the skin, yowzers! My wedding band gets stuck on my finger, when normally it slides off easily, and I lose a bit of definition. I hate how that looks and feels.
- undersuit 11y ago
  Body builders will maintain high sodium levels until just before a competition, whereupon they stop consuming sodium and their water retention decreases granting them extra temporary muscle definition.

kazinator 11y ago

If you consciously reduce your salt, it is probably good for your health. This is not necessarily because of the salt, but because reducing your salt intake pretty much requires preparing your own food from unprocessed ingredients, rather than eating out or consuming processed food (whose sodium levels tend to be high, and not controllable by you). A high sodium intake is widely believed to be unhealthy. Whether that is actually true or not, those who prepare high sodium food basically show that they don't give a shit about health.

jdnier 11y ago

I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a-choice http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a... Another salt video looking at conflicts of interest: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake-up-the-salt-debate/ http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake...

jsprogrammer 11y ago
In case someone doesnt want to watch the videos: the amount of sodium discussed in the first video as "normal" is <1g/day.

logfromblammo 11y ago

In lieu of any conclusive evidence that has percolated down to the mainstream news media, I'm just going to operate under the entirely baseless hypothesis that the human body can tolerate any amount of sodium above its absolute minimum required for basic functioning, provided that it is consumed within a certain range of proportions with potassium, calcium, magnesium, and water. I suspect that the mineral content of seawater diluted to 1.5% salinity (from 3.5%) would have a bit too much sodium, and not enough potassium, but would otherwise be safe to consume in any quantity. Needless to say, testing this hypothesis on humans might raise a few ethical concerns. Finding enough people who already drink nothing but diluted seawater to claim significance might also prove difficult.

browseatwork 11y ago

I wonder to what extent this can be explained by varying individual responses to salt. Maybe none- definitely possible. The recent study showing blood sugar response varied widely amongst individuals to the same foods, I wonder if scientists will arrive at that conclusion for salt. http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar-levels-in-response-to-foods-are-highly-individual http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar-lev...

Trumpitron 11y ago

I think the core issue is that biology doesn't know as much as the media likes to claim it does. I mean read this: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf052915.php#.VWzrrUM7T6Y.mailto http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf05291.... If true, this effectively invalidates nearly all previous research regarding the safety of anything we inject into our blood stream because they may in fact impact the brain. Many people have a choice to make. Although the scientific community may make a consistently supported claim about something does not mean that something will turn out to be true. Creating a near-perfect predictive model of the human body for doctors to use is about as complex a task as reverse engineering a UFO (actually reverse engineering an alien space craft is still probably more simple). They are going to make mistakes along the way. So you are faced with a choice. Either take a risk with incomplete knowledge that something man made will not be harmful in the long term or keep doing most of the same stuff that we've been doing for centuries that has a known, if imperfect, outcome. Yes there are a lot of things can will probably kill you first, but does that mean you should continue to assume more risk on the claim that a predictive model that the scientific community generally endorses is correct enough to avoid harm? Then again "organic" can mean a lot of things and the lack of regulation and quality control can and has made things worse on the other end. Just because it has the label "USDA Organic" doesn't mean that the USDA or FDA has done the job you think it does. There is risk and uncertainty either way.