Salt (Sodium Chloride)
The balance of Sodium and Potassium regulates the amount of water that is bound in the body. Roughly, Sodium binds it, Potassium releases it. If the balance is disturbed, it is harmful for the health.
The daily need of sodium is 1000-2000mg, for potassium it is 2000mg. An increased intake of salt gives a lot of sodium but no potassium, and creates a relative potassium deficiency.
2.8g common salt, Sodium Chloride, gives ca 1g (1000mg) sodium. It is not uncommon that people of the "civilised world" use 14g salt or more per day!
Things get even worse if you eat refined sugar, because it "steals" potassium for its metabolism, thus further changing the balance in the same direction.
Most people are aware that common salt raises the blood pressure, and that, if it is high, a reduction of the salt intake is beneficial.
To express it very, very simply, the sodium of common salt binds water, and with more water in the system, the pressure against various tissues increases. Compare this to a balloon filled with air. The more air you push into the balloon, the higher the pressure against its inner wall becomes. If it gets too high, the balloon will burst. If it is already somehow damaged, it will burst earlier.
Too much water in the body makes blood pressure rise and causes various forms of oedema. In order to protect themselves against the higher pressure, the arteries grow thicker walls. With growing thickness elasticity decreases, which reduces their participation in the driving pulse of circulation, thus putting a higher strain on the heart. The reduced elasticity makes the vessels less able to parry further rising pressure, and they become more prone to burst.
At this stage you are in serious trouble and well on your way to serious cardiovascular disease.
(It should be noted that common salt is not the only possible reason for hypertension - high blood pressure. There are several others.)
This is not the only thing that happens when the balance between sodium and potassium is disturbed. These elements also regulate the electric voltage between the inner and outer side of the membrane of the cell. The membrane is like a door to the cell, and the voltage regulates what will be allowed into it and out from it. When this electrolytic balance is disturbed, nutrients are not let in, and waste is not let out properly. The cell becomes ill.
Excessive sodium forms very alkaline compounds, which irritate and damage the body. Alkalinity can be neutralised by something acidic; so, as protection the body produces lactic acid. But this creates a new danger: this acid is a contributory cause of cancer.
So, common salt contributes to cancer in two known ways, one by disturbing the electrolyte balance, the other by causing a production of lactic acid.
Just as sugar, salt is an addictive drug. If you are used to a lot of salt, it is hard to stop taking it, but it is possible. There is absolutely no nutritional need for common salt. The required sodium quota is well filled by ordinary foodstuffs. The only time it can be justified is during extreme sweating, since the loss of sodium through sweating can be considerable. In such a situation, you can get heat stroke, which is often a result of acute sodium deficiency.
To get the salty taste without ingesting a lot of sodium, you can use sodium-reduced salt, where some of the sodium is replaced with other minerals, like potassium or magnesium.
An even better alternative is to use kelp powder. Kelp is a brown algae, and pure superfood. It is a nutritionally valuable and well balanced mineral (and to some extent vitamin) supplement, and it is salty. A problem is that it can be hard to find it in form of powder. Most kelp preparations are made as tablets (sold as a mineral supplement), and in that form it cannot be used for salting.
Salt has also been used in magic to remove evil forces. Interestingly, it is biologically purifying externally. On the skin, salt water can be used for disinfection.
Why Do People Like Salt?
Why have people come to love salt?
Salt has drug-like properties: it is hard to stop once started with it. That, along with the fact that food habits to a large extent are inherited, is why salt abuse is still so common. But originally it had a practical purpose. Salting was the first widely used method of preserving food and it has surely been used as a preservative for millennia. As such, it was important and valuable. Not good for the health, but better than starving to death. After all, it provided the possibility to store food and use it later, in a period of scarcity. Today, however, it is not needed at all, except in times of extreme sweating. But people got used to it, so it remained in the cooking habits.
If you feel that food doesn't taste anything without salt, it is just a habit. If you skip salted food entirely for half a year or a year, you will feel the real taste of food - and if anything is salted, you can hardly eat it.
Incidentally, the English word “salary” can be derived from the Latin word “sal”, which means salt. It shows how important salt once was. Roman soldiers are said to have received a part of their salary in form of salt.
(This article is partly based on material previously published in Meriondho Leo.)
Copyright © 2020 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.
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Long before we had refrigeration, salt was used to preserve and/or cure our foods. I imagine we got used to the taste. Often when you are eating something that taste bland, when you add a little salt, that usually does the trick! It's no wonder people like salt.