Sling the salt

Gryfon

I keep loosing my salf grinder as I hardly ever use it

Like everything you don't have to cut it out completely just don't overdo it! We have salt on chips from the chippy (not home made ones) and in various baking recipes which calls for it. I suppose you could say I use it in soups as well as I add a stock cube, but then you can by stock cubes with a lot less salt in now!

Just don't add it where it's not needed! Also think of other things you can add to flavour stuff instead like pepper, ground spices etc.

Ted_Hutchinson

Rage_in_Eden wrote:

One Mum was horrified and said that beans to be used were loaded with salt and then proceeded to give her child another variety which had... just as much salt in them.

Salt content baked beans 2004 This shows that little has been done to reduce salt content in beans. If you are aiming for a healthy 1.5g salt daily salt intake then even the reduced salt beans are out.

LizEstelle

Hmm... hadn't realised that someone had resurrected my old thread!

With various others on much the same theme of late, I have to say I DO find it heartening that more people seem to be taking an interest.

To anyone reading about sodium (salt, usually!) content of food for the first time, I urge you to cut down wherever you can and take the difference in flavour until you get used to it. The health benefit might not just be good but actually LIFE-SAVING over the longer term...and...

... think twice before buying any kind of processed food (if it comes in a container of any kind it's usually been processed). The food 'industry' has been pouring unnecessary amounts of salt into their products for years and can't/won't break the habit.

If you're over 45, as many as 2 out of 10 of you out there reading this could be borderline or fully hypertensive. This is a serious precursor condition to heart attack/stroke and needs to be treated. If you're not sure, for heaven's sake take yourself off to your GP practice and get the nurse to check you.

topgranny

vizcacha wrote:

I spent ages phasing salt out of my diet only to then be told by the doc that because I have low blood pressure (something I found out recently) I need to eat more than I am!

There are defintely times I crave it but I thought that was just coz I got used to it!

I don't know - it's hard to know what's good for you nowadays....

My OH always says that if you crave a certain food, i.e. salty or sweet(choc!) it's what your body needs. Obviously this is right in your case.

topgranny

I have read through most of this thread and couldn't agree more with the fact that we don't need anywhere near as much salt as most of us use. My DH always used to use LOADS and said "you can't eat meat without salt!" I have got him pretty much away from it now (and fat - he was born in 1938 and was brought up on things like toast and dripping :eek: ). I had a real struggle to stop him putting salt on everything for the kids when they were young.

Anyway, I have found that most steamed veg don't seem to need any salt, especially potatoes. The steaming seems to bring out the proper flavour of the veg and so nothing else is needed.

Pandora123_2

The evidence is far from conclusive that higher levels of salt in the diet categorically lead to higher levels of blood pressure.

Salt and Blood Pressure: Conventional Wisdom Reconsidered

Indeed, reducing salt intake too much can have negative effects on your health:

Severe Salt Restriction Can Be Harmful

Low Salt Diet a Danger for Elderly

Severe Salt Restriction May Cause Diabetes in Susceptible People

I use salt fairly generously in cooking, and cook mostly from scratch. My BP has always been "nice and low" (to quote the nurse), so I see no need to restrict the family salt intake.

Having said that, cutting salt intake is beneficial for those people who are "salt sensitive".

Just my two cents... armed with the evidence everyone should make their own decision! (which may be polar opposite to mine )

carol_a_3

It's not just manufactured food though that is over salted. I haven't used salt in cooking for many years and can't bear tinned soup etc but that's easy enough to avoid. I find that eating out in restaurants though , even fairly expensive ones, ruined because I find the food much too salty. I had some soup once which tasted like sea water to me although everyone else I was with said how lovely it was. All the TV chefs throw in handfuls of salt when they're cooking so perpetuating the myth that all food must be salty to "taste of anything!!"

Ted_Hutchinson

Pandora123 wrote:

The evidence is far from conclusive that higher levels of salt in the diet categorically lead to higher levels of blood pressure.

Given the dates of the research links you've provided I think it would be better if the above sentence was edited to read WAS rather than "is"
During the past 30 years, the one-third decrease in the average salt intake has been accompanied by a more than 10-mm Hg fall in the population average of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and a 75% to 80% decrease in both stroke and coronary heart disease mortality in Finland. There is no evidence of any harmful effects of salt reduction

Almost 50% of essential hypertension is salt-sensitive, this characteristic increases and becomes more prevalent with age.

Importance of Salt in Determining Blood Pressure in Children: Meta ...

I certainly have never suggested that anyone avoids salt completely. I use it in my cooking. I just don't use a lot. But I do think people who buy ready meals should look at the sodium content, they should then get out the digital scales and weigh out that quantity of salt and ask themselves if it is a reasonable quantity to put on one portion. When I tried this with some Tesco's pasta meals a while back I was horrified and haven't bought Tesco's ready meals since. Perhaps someone reading this has a ready meal to hand and can update me on the sodium content of Tesco's pasta based ready meals.

Pandora123_2

Ted_Hutchinson wrote:

Given the dates of the research links you've provided I think it would be better if the above sentence was edited to read WAS rather than "is"
During the past 30 years, the one-third decrease in the average salt intake has been accompanied by a more than 10-mm Hg fall in the population average of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and a 75% to 80% decrease in both stroke and coronary heart disease mortality in Finland. There is no evidence of any harmful effects of salt reduction

One study does not negate the results of previous studies. It only makes things more interesting

Here is another take on the Finnish study you quoted:

"...the only data that we have linking salt intake to health outcomes is observational data. There are about eight or nine observational studies and except for one in Japan and one in Finland where salt intake is two or three times what it is in most of the industrialised world all of the studies like mine indicate an inverse relationship between salt intake and health outcomes."

There are loads of reasons why people shouldn't eat ready meals, but I *personally* don't think salt is as big a demon as many people believe.

JMHO...

LizEstelle

Pandora123 wrote:

One study does not negate the results of previous studies. It only makes things more interesting

Here is another take on the Finnish study you quoted:

"...the only data that we have linking salt intake to health outcomes is observational data. There are about eight or nine observational studies and except for one in Japan and one in Finland where salt intake is two or three times what it is in most of the industrialised world all of the studies like mine indicate an inverse relationship between salt intake and health outcomes."

There are loads of reasons why people shouldn't eat ready meals, but I *personally* don't think salt is as big a demon as many people believe.

JMHO...

So your suggested cause for the gradual and inexorable growth of hypertension in the adult population (which seems to mirror the arrival and infiltration of processed food into the general diet) would be...?