On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Ben Balzer wrote:

> Firstly, there are 6 distinct levels of salt consumption- see bottom of this
> post. This is what really stuffs things up. The other thing that stuffs it
> up is the need to measure slat excretion, rather than intake.

Well, if you are trying to support a causal effect between
reduced intake and ameliorated hypertension, then it's intake
that you need to measure.

> Why do people love the taste of salt (or sodium anyway)?- My opinion:
> Blood and extracellular fluid are high in sodium 140mmol/l, whereas cells
> have low sodium (5mmol/l). These days we blees our meat before eating it.
> CfF in the  wild, the slaughtttered animal is eaten immediately- blood and
> all and therefore tasdstes very salty. Simple. (I haven't asked my salt
> expert friend about this).

That's a good point, and it shows that there are more ways than
just living near the ocean to get salt.  Given the presence of
salt detectors on our tongues, it suggests that we are innately
motivated not to waste the salt that we find in freshly killed
meat.  As you say, the amount of blood in meat in the supermarket
is much less.  Using a salt shaker is just a way to get the salt
level to what it would be if we were getting the blood too.

> HERE"S what I posted before (cut from another list- Australia's leading salt
> expert): (sorry it wasn't Yanomano Indians, it was Yanomama)(the lawn bit
> refers to a comment I made about people fainting on low salt diets- which
> normally is confined to people taking diuretics(these work by causing
> increased salt excretion0 who then go on a low salt diet- a bad
> combination).

Ah, but Ben, a person on a very diet is, in effect, using
a diuretic.  This is pointed out even by the critics of these
diets, who claim that the weight loss they bring about is "just
water."  This is why you can't generalize about the evils of
salt.  People on lowcarb diets have an increased need for
electrolytes, just because their retention is less. =20

> If you want the fittest person on earth to mow your lawn, look no further
> than the Yanomama Indians of the remote rainforest of Brazil and Venezuela.
> They are the world's most salt free society with an estimated intake of 6
> mmol/day and a 24-hour sodium excretion rate of less than 1 mmol (one
> millimole).

Do they bring their own mowers?  Anyway, we don't want to commit
a post hoc fallacy by assuming that their great fitness is
*because* of their low salt intake.  At most this shows that good
health is compatible with low salt intake *under some
conditions*.

> You couldn't find a better advertisement for the Paleodiet than the
> Yanomama (syn. Yanomamo, Yanomam=F6), except that admittedly they live in
> settlements and grow vegetables to supplement the meat, fruit and
> vegetables obtained by hunting and gathering.

Indeed, but their diet is at the higher carb end of the spectrum.
As I recall they also use tubers and get a fair amount of starch
from that source as well.

> The learning curve of GPs about salt doesn't move until they begin to
> measure intake by 24-hour excretion.

But exretion tells you nothing about retention, intracellular
levels, etc.

> Some people who have sworn that they neither cooked
> with salt nor added it at the table, and have avoided salty foods
> religiously and kept no salt in the house, have actually passed over 200
> mmol of sodium in a 24 hour urine collection.

And they may be telling the truth.  Maybe instead of eating salt
they drank coffee all day (a diuretic) and alcohol at night (a
diuretic).  So their sodium output is high, and in fact they are
electrolyte depleted.  That's not an indication that they were
covertly eating salt during the day.

Todd Moody