New studies, new research into salt have once more raised alarms. We eat too much salt! Same old same old scare. SOME people may eat too much salt. But we live in a careless irresponsible age of mass communication when everything is blown out of all proportion. Why should we ALL be lectured/scared.?
Our ancestors survived on salt and pickling, read this post:
“My mother was born on the Island of Lewis in a thatched house, no running water, toilet or washing facilities, the door was shared with the hen and cow. A family of nine, three boys and six girls, (three died in their teens of TB) they lived on salted items, herring, guga, meat, fish meal scones with plenty salt and, also thought to cause health problems, butter, cheese, crowdie, cream,and full cream milk. She and her sisters lived into their ninties they neither drank nor smoked, none had high blood pressure, strokes or cardiovascular problems a brother a heavy smoker died on an aneurys
m age 80.
This diet was the rule rather than the exception on the islands and is still favourite to many.
- Donella Mackenzie, Evanton. UK, 01/5/2007 20:10
Lewis islanders may have evolved to tolerate, indeed benefit from lots of salt. If the global Health departments know that it is difficult to measure salt sensitivity, why jump to conclusions. Why not just identify those groups who have been found to be oversensitive to salt and leave it at that?
The answer is that this is another way to knock processed food which uses salt to improve taste. And the print media has eagerly joined the anti processed food crusade and prints whatever it’s handed.
Atleast the BBC strives for balance.
Is salt bad for all of us? bbc 2009 update
Some scientists and food writers believe that salt has been demonised without conclusive evidence. They point out that Intersalt, a significant 1988 global study on salt consumption and high blood pressure, with more than 10,000 participants, did not prove a link between high blood pressure and salt consumption in healthy people, though it did show the more salt consumed, the more likely it was that blood pressure could increase with age.
Critics argue that only some people are sensitive to salt and that these are the people, along with anyone with heart problems, liver disease or kidney disease, who need to watch their salt intake.
For everyone else, argues food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, the food writer for American Vogue magazine, in an essay in ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’ (published by Headline), salt is an important part of good food.
