SA's Sodium intake too high: Study

LazyLion

LazyLion

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South Africans' daily sodium intake is higher than the recommended amount, a study revealed on Monday.

The current sodium intake by South Africans was seven grams per day, while the World Health Organisation guidelines recommended an intake of four to six grams per day, according to the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (Pure) study.

The SA Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases recommended that the entire population lower its sodium intake to below five grams per day by 2020.

Salt contains sodium.

The Pure study, which was led by investigators from the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University, and Hamilton Health Sciences in Canada, followed more than 100,000 people for almost four years.

The study assessed sodium and potassium intake and related them to blood pressure, deaths, heart disease, and strokes.

The results of the study were put together by hundreds of investigators from 18 countries.

Professor Thandi Puoane, from the University of the Western Cape, was one of two South African researchers involved. The researchers were responsible for the urban site in Langa, Cape Town, and the rural site in Mount Frere, Eastern Cape.

"My research has shown that poor people often say 'we eat porridge and salt because we have nothing else to eat'," she said in a statement.

"The basic fact is that these people may consume too much salt, which is dangerous as they do not eat enough fruit and vegetables which are high in potassium to balance the salt consumed."


Source : Sapa /gq/jk/lp/ar
Date : 18 Aug 2014 11:11
 
But we also loose more Salt via sweating compared to a countries in Europe and North America? I dont know how acurate reasoning is , but me and my ex had dinner at this place in VA Waterfront in Cape Town and he sent his pasta back twice because it was too salty for him. I tasted it and I thought it was delicous. Anyway, the third time the actual Chef or cook (he is from Europe also...had a accent) or whatever comes to the table and asked what is going on. When he heard my ex is a Englesman from the UK he said it makes sense now. South Africans tend to crave salt more than Euorpeans because of our warm weather and sweating so much more. When he started cooking here he had to start making his food a little bit more salty. Anyway....that is what he said. I thought it was very interesting, but how true it is I dont know. He made a new batch for the Engelsman and we walked out of there happy and full. :D
 
Garyvdh said:
Jesus said "Salt is good" ... who am I to argue?
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"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."

Matthew 5:13
 
saor said:
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."

Matthew 5:13
Click to expand...

"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
- Luke 14:34 NIV
 
Interesting though that there is in fact a disagreement with the old "too much salt is bad for you" fraternity....

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/

It's Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
Jul 8, 2011 |By Melinda Wenner Moyer

For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

Fears over salt first surfaced more than a century ago. In 1904 French doctors reported that six of their subjects who had high blood pressure—a known risk factor for heart disease—were salt fiends. Worries escalated in the 1970s when Brookhaven National Laboratory's Lewis Dahl claimed that he had "unequivocal" evidence that salt causes hypertension: he induced high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. (Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day.)

Dahl also discovered population trends that continue to be cited as strong evidence of a link between salt intake and high blood pressure. People living in countries with a high salt consumption—such as Japan—also tend to have high blood pressure and more strokes. But as a paper pointed out several years later in the American Journal of Hypertension, scientists had little luck finding such associations when they compared sodium intakes within populations, which suggested that genetics or other cultural factors might be the culprit. Nevertheless, in 1977 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.

Scientific tools have become much more precise since then, but the correlation between salt intake and poor health has remained tenuous. Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day. In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79. The review concluded that "intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials." A 2003 Cochrane review of 57 shorter-term trials similarly concluded that "there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake."

Studies that have explored the direct relationship between salt and heart disease have not fared much better. Among them, a 2006 American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. It found that the more sodium people ate, the less likely they were to die from heart disease. And a 2007 study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology followed 1,500 older people for five years and found no association between urinary sodium levels and the risk of coronary vascular disease or death. For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not.

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 and the chair of the salt committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. One oft-cited 1987 study published in the Journal of Chronic Diseases reported that the number of people who experience drops in blood pressure after eating high-salt diets almost equals the number who experience blood pressure spikes; many stay exactly the same. That is because "the human kidney is made, by design, to vary the accretion of salt based on the amount you take in," explains Michael Alderman, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and former president of the International Society of Hypertension.

Some physicians argue that although tiny blood pressure drops will not have a big effect on individuals—they will not really affect your risk of having a heart attack—they may end up saving lives at the population level, in part because a small percentage of the population, including some African-Americans and elderly individuals, seem to be hypersensitive to salt. For instance, a study published in February 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that cutting salt intake by about 35 percent would save at least 44,000 American lives per year. But such estimates are not evidence, either; they are conjecture. And low-salt diets could have side effects: when salt intake is cut, the body responds by releasing renin and aldosterone, an enzyme and a hormone, respectively, that increase blood pressure.

Rather than create drastic salt policies based on conflicting data, Alderman and his colleague Hillel Cohen propose that the government sponsor a large, controlled clinical trial to see what happens to people who follow low-salt diets over time. Appel responds that such a trial "cannot and will not be done," in part because it would be so expensive. But unless we have clear data, evangelical antisalt campaigns are not just based on shaky science; they are ultimately unfair. "A great number of promises are being made to the public with regard to this enormous benefit and lives saved," Cohen says. But it is "based on wild extrapolations."
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Garyvdh said:
"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
- Luke 14:34 NIV
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How the hell does salt loose its "saltiness"

How to make it salty again though, I will desolve it in water, drink it, and then when I sweat it out by my pit, it will be salty again. :D
 
Ockie said:
How the hell does salt loose its "saltiness"

How to make it salty again though, I will desolve it in water, drink it, and then when I sweat it out by my pit, it will be salty again. :D
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I dunno man... I just use it as an excuse. :D
 
The study assessed sodium and potassium intake and related them to blood pressure, deaths, heart disease, and strokes

Speaks directly to the quality of the salt, that gets marketed, and we willing consume... I was told to cut salt out of my diet, due to my hypertension issue. While looking for natural alternatives, discovered the difference between natural occurring salt and the mass produced stuff ... I switched, and only use Himalayan Salt.... added to the other adjustments in my life, have my hypertension issue under control...


Table Salt vs Himalayan Salt Chemistry


Common table salt is referred to as inorganic sodium chloride. It can't maintain water balance in the body as well as sea salts. Common table salt crystals are hard, dry, and isolated from each other. Your body has difficulty processing this. Water molecules surround salt crystals and try to dissolve them. This separates them into sodium and chloride ions. These large, hard crystals are difficult to solubilize. The salt is also present in excess amount due to its large crystal size. All of this contributes to water being pulled out of your cells causing cell dehydration. Sea salts are in colloidal form, easily dissolve and absorb in the body, and they contain all salts known to exist not just sodium chloride.


Taking in too much salt and the wrong kind of salt has a number of consequences. Consider taking in one serving of table salt (1 tsp, 1gm). Your body uses 23 times that amount of cell water to dissolve the salt. Think about having 3 meals a day plus salty snacks compounded daily. Many people are taking in somewhere between 4 to 6 grams a day. Excessive salt contributes to the formation of cellulite, arthritis, gout, hypertension, kidney and bladder stones.


Common table salt contains sodium chloride, calcium silicate, dextrose, and potassium iodide. Calcium silicate is used as an anti-caking agent. This keeps the salt flowing in humid conditions but if there's too much moisture in the air it will clump. Dextrose is used to stabilize the iodide.


Potassium iodide happens to be one of two forms of iodine that the FDA allows in table salt. Animal feed is generally fortified with potassium iodate. This is also true of food salt outside the U.S. because of its stability. The U.S. doesn't allow potassium iodate in food salt for some reason. Being unstable, potassium iodide is easily oxidized to iodine and lost by volatilization (evaporation) from the salt. Dextrose is added to prevent iodide from being oxidized and escaping as a purple-pink gas. Iodine is added to the salt to prevent goiter. The thyroid requires iodine to make the hormone thyroxine. Deficiency in iodine causes the thyroid to enlarge in the neck. Goiter symptoms may include neck tenderness, pressure on the windpipe and esophagus accompanied with shortness of breath and choking, coughing, and hoarseness. See the picture of the young girl above.


Himalayan Salt


Himalayan salt's colloidal nature allows each salt molecule to be inter-connected through molecular vibrations. This salt is said to be the purest salt available essentially uncontaminated with any toxins or pollutants. Quite often this salt has been hand mined and washed in an environment that is pristine. Himalayan salt is over 250 million years old that has been exposed to high tectonic pressure surrounded by ice and snow high in the mountains. When observed under a microscope, this salt has a perfect crystalline structure.

It is believed to be of the highest grade. This salt has an unlimited shelf life and doesn't require any pouring agents.The renowned Frezenius Institute in Europe analyzed the Himalayan Crystal Salt. The research analysis confirmed the holistic properties of the original Himalayan crystal salt. The sodium chloride content is 97.41% and meets the worldwide necessary standards for table salt. For a list of the salt elements, go to http://www.saltnews.com/chemical-analysis-natural-himalayan-pink-salt/.


Some sea salts are referred to as organic salts. Clearly, salt is a mineral and not a plant/animal so it can't be organic. Nevertheless, there are sea salts that are certified as organic salts. This means that the salt has been collected from protected, pollution-free environments, and unrefined. For that reason, the pink Himalayan salt is called an organic salt.
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http://www.xbrain.co.uk/table-salt-versus-himalayan-salt
 
Loose...lose. Learn the difference. Loose means when my pants fall off my waist because I forgot to wear my belt. Lose means to suffer the loss of something.
 
Well spicing my biltong with sugar is not going to work is it?
 
yebocan said:
The study assessed sodium and potassium intake and related them to blood pressure, deaths, heart disease, and strokes

Speaks directly to the quality of the salt, that gets marketed, and we willing consume... I was told to cut salt out of my diet, due to my hypertension issue. While looking for natural alternatives, discovered the difference between natural occurring salt and the mass produced stuff ... I switched, and only use Himalayan Salt.... added to the other adjustments in my life, have my hypertension issue under control...




http://www.xbrain.co.uk/table-salt-versus-himalayan-salt
Click to expand...
Where do you buy? PNP, Chekers, etc.?
 
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