Don’t Assault the Salt

All salt is sea salt—Alton Brown

The trick of that blue box

That blue box, can shaped actually, is my first memory of salt. You know the one: the girl with the umbrella. It always poured so nicely from that can. I used the empty cans to make ducks with construction paper.

As a culinary student then cook then chef/instructor, I gave little attention to salt. The iodized salt tasted bad, but after that, eh, salt was salt and it made the food taste better.

My initial intent with this piece was to show that salts are, mostly, the same ingredient with some pretty colors and very different prices.

I watched a vidcast with Dr James DiNicolantonio, author of The Salt Fix.  I learned that my initial idea was about as wrong as can be.  Those free-flowing salts are to be avoided and those salts in pretty colors are the good stuff.

A brief brief on salt

First, what is a salt?  A salt is a neutrally charged combination of two electrically opposite elements with one being a metal. In table salt, Sodium Chloride, sodium is the metal (I know, right?), and chloride is not. Sodium, Na, is positively charged and the chloride, Cl, is negatively charged. They share at least one electron in their form NaCl and as a whole are stable and not lethal.

Sodium, the metal, is not found as is in nature. It is bonded to another element. In this case, Cl. As sodium chloride, salt has existed in rocks some 3.5 million years ago. As rains and volcanic activity washed and disrupted the planet and the rocks, NaCl was washed into bodies of water which became our seas. Some of those seas evaporated leaving behind the salt. Some are inland lakes. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is one.

For more information– and more there be– about the origins of the seas, salt and Earth, I found this article and this one for starters.

Be we from the sea?

The origins story is interesting and well outside the scope of this piece. Curiously, however, is the sea and of the human body bears a strong similarity to sodium content as well as many of the minerals both bodies need. Sodium may be the most critical for sustaining human life. It facilitates the functioning of the muscles and nerves, controls the water in the cells and gives us blood pressure. Without blood pressure, well, we would be dead.  Why, then, prescribe low salt diets?

How did this happen?

The study of salt in nutrition has focused almost exclusively on the sodium, overlooking the chloride.  In table salt that’s pretty much all there is except maybe iodide-a synthetic form of iodine-or an aluminum product to keep the salt free flowing.  Also, that white color has been created either by bleaching the salt or heating it to extreme temperatures and, sadly, eliminating the good chemicals.

What has been overlooked, until recently, was those important chemicals-minerals-removed from salt and which are vital to the health of the human body.

I spoke with Kyle Mamounis, PhD, the biochemist from Episode 14 of the Culinary Libertarian podcast, about salt research and he referenced this dietary sodium intake paper, quoting “There really isn’t a population wide correlation (let alone causation) with sodium intake and mortality or hypertension etc. There are some people that seem to respond to increased salt with hypertension, and more generally there is an acute effect where salt boosts blood pressure, but it isn’t chronic.

Also, countries with much higher salt intake like Japan don’t have a huge problem with hypertension. And some people will have negative effects, sometimes even increased blood pressure. Potassium is also a wild card, it has been suggested as a counter balance but doesn’t work the same in everyone. There was a fad that didn’t quite get off the ground of using potassium salt rather than sodium salt on food.”

I remember my grandmother having a small shaker can of No-Salt on her table.

The Central Planner Problem

Kyle makes an important point.  The idea that a single thing can be seen, measured, and controlled in a system as complex as the human body is doomed to fail.  A one-size-fits-all approach on the very variable human body is either idiocy or arrogance. Kyle sees the problem this way, “It’s even worse than that.  These biologists seem to forget biology when they consider their recommendations.  They will look at sugar, which obviously raises blood sugar, or salt, which tends to raise blood pressure as the blood has more solutes in it, and forget one of the central tenets of biology which is negative feedback and compensatory mechanisms.  Like economists trying to increase revenue by raising the tax rate, they actually think somehow they will get a linear response in a symptomatic variable from a linear change in one of these nutrients. It’s completely insane.  [It’s] almost nutritional Keynesianism.”

How did salt become so vilified?

Salt and its effect on the human body has been a contested issue for a long time. Reports published in 1904 had refutations published just a few years later and it has been back and forth since. Lewis Dahl, a researcher, claimed to find a link between rats and sodium. [1]

Dr James DiNicolantonio, author of The Salt Fix, finds Dahl’s study less than credible. DiNicolantonio points out that genetically engineered rats were used to draw conclusions about humans, and that skewed the results. [2]

The Scientific American published an article “It’s Time to End the War on Salt,” stating, the “U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl’s work.”[3] That report was published in 1977.  The ideas have taken hold and the work against that continues, but is slow going.

Scientific American points out, as did Kyle, that the complexities of the human body and, specifically the kidneys, are far too complicated to be subject to blanket statements.  “Part of the problem is that individuals vary in how they respond to salt.  ‘It’s tough to nail these associations,’ admits Lawrence Appel, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University . . .”

The hypertension issue

Dr. David A McCarron, quoted in Mark Bitterman’s Salted, comments “‘Sodium is but one factor in the complex interplay of multiple, inextricably related regulatory systems of which hypertension is the end result. A rise in blood pressure means you need to add minerals to your diet, not cut back on salt.  Tragically, the idea that salt is bad for your blood pressure is one of the most generally accepted notions out there.’”[4]

Minerals for the health of it

Mineral deficiency is becoming recognized as a real issue to our health. Iodine, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Copper, Iron and more are vital micro-nutrients easily obtained, in part, from salt. Just not the commercially available stuff.

Iodine

Dr. Brownstein, of Dr. Brownstein’s Holistic Medicine, suggests that iodine deficiency can have serious adverse affects on the thyroid, which manages many of our functions including temperature and “foggy brain”.[5]

That blue can from my childhood, in Detroit, was iodized salt.  Turns out not iodine but an ion, iodide, usually bonded to potassium or sodium.  Iodide is, according to Dr Brownstein, an inefficient way to get iodine into the body.

Iodine is a necessary element for health, including the thyroid.  “The thyroid is part of the endocrine system, which is made up of glands that produce, store, and release hormones into the bloodstream so the hormones can reach the body’s cells.  The thyroid gland uses iodine from the foods you eat to make two main hormones Triiodothyronine (T3) [and] Thyroxine (T4).”[6]

It’s elemental

I mentioned my certainty that this piece was a puff piece.  The presence of micro-nutrients in salt was the push into the rabbit hole.  I simply had no idea this was part of salt.

I didn’t know that is because salt simply isn’t discussed.  If salt is discussed, it is to eat less.  We’ve seen that that isn’t really good advice.

Mineral salts–a phrase to distinguish between table salt–can contain up to 80 elements and micro-nutrients, including magnesium, potassium, calcium, copper, iron, zinc, iodine, phosphorus and more.  If we don’t obtain these important elements from our salt we are left either taking supplements or not getting them at all, causing deficiencies and problems.

Assault the salt

The blue box or other commercial salt needs to be replaced.  Use it up and buy better.

I’ve checked my local grocery store and in the bulk bins is sea salt as white as the rest of the commercial salts, so I really don’t trust that.  The store does carry packaged pink Himalayan salt.  Nothing else, but it is better than the bleached salt.  Dr. DiNicolantonio is particularly fond of Redmond Real Salt, mined from a dried sea in Utah.

Eating a strict regimented diet for physical health might achieve the goal of weight loss or muscle density, but I say it comes at a price.

I very much like to savor what I’m eating.  Eating well, and enjoying it,contributes to an emotional health quotient which I think is overlooked. And, I think that is also costly.  The cost is not measured in heart attacks, but in dread. Suffering through a meal because “it’s good for me” seems hardly good for me.

A balance between physical and emotional health about food is important and can be easily attended to by changing salts.  Mark Bitterman started his journey collecting salts from the places he visited and each had a specific flavor and contribution.

How much is too much?

Dr DiNicolantonio opines that your body will communicate to you when it is enough. Need more, you’ll be signaled to eat more.  Too much and you’ll be signaled to drink water.

Reason is important too. Our bodies need micro-nutrients but not on every bite at every meal.

How little it too little?

Deficiency, both of sodium in low-salt diets, and micro nutrients as a group, is one of the important issues Dr DiNicolantonio makes.  Deficiency occurs, partly from eating the commercial salt which doesn’t contain any of those important micro-nutrients, but also from elimination either from urine or sweat.  The effects of deficiency are vast and impressive.  Alarming, but impressive.

Sodium deficiency can rob the bones of calcium.  Iodine deficiency, apart from the thyroid, also impact metabolism and our bodies also store fat with too little salt, which is a double edged sword.  Insulin resistance from low salt means we cannot access that stored fat for energy.  We feel fatigue and the energy transfer in ATP needs magnesium.  Basically, the body is less efficient in its functions on a low salt diet.  Inefficiency is overworking and that’s not good.

If you have known health issues, of course, talk to your doctor. Ask questions about the suggestions and what happens if you are advised to alter your eating. What is the unseen consequence of that plan?

Where to get a-salt-ed

Sea salt makers, made the old fashioned way, are a good source of mineral salt.  In California, Pacific Flake makes salt by the evaporation method.  In Oregon, Mark Bitterman’s company sells salt.  Redmond Real Salt, recommended by Dr DiNicolantonio, is a good source of minerals.  Check your grocery store or health food store or shop Amazon.

Here’s a podcast episode I did on salt which includes some of Dr. James’ info, and a bit of a review of, his book, The Salt Fix.

Sources cited

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2118645/

[2] https://ketogenic.com/84-dr-james-dinicolantonio-the-salt-fix/

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/

[4] Bitterman, Mark, (2010). Salted. Singapore: Ten Speed Press. 46

[5] https://www.drbrownstein.com/dr-bs-blog/

[6] https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid-nodules/thyroid-gland-controls-bodys-metabolism-how-it-works-symptoms-hyperthyroi

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Let me know what you thought of this article.  Do you have a favorite mineral salt?

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