SURPRISE SALT RISK: WEAKER BONES

Traditional Tuscan bread has no salt in it. There are several good recipes on the net. It is quite good, but can be a little bland, which is why it is frequently served with salami or other spicy meat on top. I am a home baker who is also on a low salt diet and find that a little salt in my bread is fine.

Me, too, honorah. If we eliminated Cool Whip and Campbell's Soup from our foodscape, we'd all be a lot healthier!

Even better is use a pressure cooker. You don't have to cook as long and since the water doesn't roil in a boil it ends up much clearer. Finally you can leave the pressure cooker on the stove top to cool since it is sealed it won't let in any bacterial contaminates.

Right as usual HM!. When you prepare the majority of the food you eat from scratch, the only salt you're getting is what you add to it yourself.

It's a really wonderful thing that you're doing, cooking for your father-in-law. Home-made food, cooked with love (and wholesome ingredients) has been the healing of many a sufferer. Best wishes to your family, and especially for your FIL's increased health and comfort.

I think you and I have discussed this before. I'm a big proponent of reducing dietary fat, especially added and artificially produced fat. But that's just a matter of taste, not any allegiance to nutritional theories. I also don't like too much salt in my food. It causes various physical/emotional situations. But I do want to agree with you on the processed food-products. They're not allowed in our house, except on very special occasions, and even then, we restrict ourselves to cake or pie made with butter and minimally processed ingredients. Very occasionally, we break down and get chocolate. It's amazing how much sodium is in most processed foods, especially when you consider that the average American diet is very low in calcium and potassium (mainly found in fruit and green vegetables, dairy calcium is not as bioavailable). Calcium, potassium, and sodium work together to regulate the heartbeat, and a diet unbalanced in any one of these three chemicals is going to have an untoward effect.

I like Dr. Fuhrman, I have been on his Plant Based Diet for 8 years. He just recently published a second edition of Eat to Live with lots of new important information in the health field.

Oh so true - it is amazing how salty many processed foods actually do taste once you have weened yourself off of them!

The war against salt, like the war against dietary fat, is another one I'm going sit out. The problem with processed food-product isn't the salt, it's that it's processed food-product, just like the problem with a McDonalds hamburger isn't the amount of dietary fat, it's that it's a processed food-product. Healthy kidneys, attached to someone who eats well and is at least marginally active, rid the body of excessive sodium, if you get to that level.

Good post.

Cooking your own food from scratch eliminates much of the concern over excess sodium. Even if you salt liberally, it's bound to be far less than industrial sodium.

It's kind of funny how the attitude toward salt has changed from the 1970s to now. The GMO lobby is too strong. All that high fructose corn syrup in a lot of foods...salt didn't used to be a problem.

I've been baking bread which has two tsp. of salt in a recipe for two loaves. I have been reducing the salt so that my FIL can eat a small piece of bread once a day or every other day with his lunch or dinner. So far, I've gotten the recipe down to 1/2 the salt, but I also have to reduce the yeast by the same ratio, or the dough will rise so quickly that it falls and doesn't have good texture. He has had electrolyte imbalances that have caused hospitilization several times over the past year. His wife monitors his blood pressure every day and carefully controls his diet to make sure he doesn't eat too much salt. She had long depended on some packaged foods and is now becoming more aware of the high sodium content of many packaged, canned and frozen convenience foods, especially things like sauces, dressings and soups. Most of his siblings (6 of 8) died in their sixties of heart attacks or heart-related health issues, so she and he seem to have done a pretty good job, along with his doctors, of controlling salt in his diet and getting the medical help he needed. One advantage of cooking for him is that it is better for all of us.

I have family history (on both sides) that has always had problems with high blood pressure and hypertension. For years I used to add salt to rice during dinner. Only recently did I realize that I haven't been using salt for a very long time. For whatever reason, I guess I became oblivious to using it, and I'm glad I did. When talking about healthy eating habits, you always hear about calories and carbs, but hardly ever hear about low-sodium diets. I'm glad Dr. Fuhrman is bringing this issue to light, and hope there will be more awareness on this.

Our kidneys regulate the level of sodium in our blood. Normally, if we eat too much we excrete the excess. Some things interfere with this. Fructose, for instance, causes the kidney to resorb sodium in the proximal tubule. Meanwhile, insulin causes sodium resorption in the distal tubule. Consider that excess fructose consumption has been shown to cause insulin resistance. Also, that fructose consumption by Americans has shot up over the past several decades. So, eating too much fructose directly causes sodium retention and does so indirectly, too, by causing insulin resistance which leads to high insulin levels. This is why people on a very low-carb diet lose sodium in their urine and have to add salt to their food in order to maintain normal electrolyte-fluid balance.