The food industry maintain (and fund) an artificial debate about salt so they can continue to add huge amounts to processed food. Salt is of course linked to hypertension as the main cause of it. Unfortunately then reducing salt intkae often doesn't help, particularly as salt intake is often not sustantially reduced due to hidden salt in processed foods. Salt caused many ohter problems including osteoporosis and is known to aggravte asthma particularly exercise-induced asthma. The only reliable way to measure salt intake usually is to measure salt excretion in 24 hour urine. The alkalinising efect of th chloride ion is just as harmful as the sodium ion. Ben Balzer