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... The famous Ron Popeil, while promoting a food dehydrator on an “infomercial” denounced store-bought food that often includes salt as an added ingredient by saying “Any doctor will tell you that salt is something we can all do without. ...
In his article “Let’s Give Salt a Fair Shake,” Jack Denton Scott attacks the bad publicity salt has gotten through the “litany of denunciation. ... that salt is bad for you, regardless of your health. ... ” This, according to Scott, started the anti-salt frenzy that continues to this day (17).
But the worry over salt wasn’t generated solely by overzealous politicians and health officials, and doesn’t continue because of them. The desire to find a simple, single factor to control high blood pressure, or hypertension, has produced a health campaign against sodium in general, and salt, which is 40% sodium, in particular. ... 2
Figures regarding the chances of an individual having or developing high blood pressure vary widely, but they contribute to the fear of salt. ... Several sources reasoned that salt should be suspect because salt wasn’t a large component of primitive human diets. Their simple conclusion is that the human body evidently wasn’t made to consume large quantities of salt. ... Since there is very little salt available in the original human diet, but salt is used extensively in our modern culture to flavor and process foods, the public unquestioningly perceives salt as “bad. ...
Although experts do not list salt as the most important factor, according to Diamond various researchers have validated the salt/hypertension connection after studying population groups. The chief factors in order of significance in Diamond’s list are obesity; high intake of salt, alcohol, or saturated fats; and low calcium intake. He says researchers often found that hypertensive patients who worked to change any of these factors, including salt, successfully reduced their blood pressure (Diamond 22). ...
Null considers it an “established medical fact” that salt causes high blood pressure (491). He says that avoiding the “misery” of high blood pressure is as simple as decreasing salt intake (492). ... The sodium content of salt, he says, causes stress, high cholesterol, heart disease, muscle weakness, kidney damage, liver damage and pancreas dysfunction, usually in a chain reaction of illnesses (490). ...
The Mayo Clinic Diet Manual doesn’t implicate salt in as many disorders as Null did, but it does mention one he had not. According to the Manual, epidemiologic studies (comparing groups of people in one culture or area to another) show that populations consuming large amounts of salt- or nitrate-cured meats experience greater incidence of cancer of the esophagus and stomach (23). ... , a committed proponent of reducing salt in the diet, admits “We do not know whether increased sodium consumption causes hypertension” (qtd. ... All sources except for Null confessed that experts do not know for certain what role sodium plays in people with high blood pressure, or why some people--Rosenfeld says only five to ten per cent of hypertensives--can alter their blood pressure by controlling salt intake (Staying Healthy 123; Rosenfeld 241). Yet salt intake remains the most widely publicized of the factors contributing to hypertension. ... Dustan, the retired Director of the University of Alabama’s Cardiovascular Research and Training Center, says “All this hue and cry about eating salt is unnecessary. ... ” Dustan’s own studies could not produce change in 150 non-hypertensive subjects by decreasing their salt intake to very low levels. ...
Those people whose hypertension is lowered by reducing salt consumption are said to be salt-sensitive.
Approximate Word count = 2921
Approximate Pages = 11.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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