For Health's Sake, Curb the Taste for Salt
By JANE E. BRODY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/08/health/08BROD.html

Jane is totally establishment in her writings. You can see this in this
article. But one paragraph has a paleo angle:

No. 3: We evolved on a diet much lower in salt than what we now consume,
and that process resulted in metabolic mechanisms designed to conserve
sodium, an essential nutrient. But at current levels of intake, this
protective mechanism can result in a harmful sodium overload.

If only she'd use this argument for other things she writes.

Since this article will disappear in a week, I quote one section:

Other Health Risks

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.