More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says
By Peter Whoriskey April 6 at 8:24 PM

For years, the federal government has advised Americans that they are eating too much salt, and that this excess contributes yearly to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

But unknown to many shoppers urged to buy foods that are “low sodium” and “low salt,” this longstanding warning has come under assault by scientists who say that typical American salt consumption is without risk.

Moreover, according to studies published in recent years by pillars of the medical community, the low levels of salt recommended by the government might actually be dangerous.

“There is no longer any valid basis for the current salt guidelines,” said Andrew Mente, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario and one of the researchers involved in a major study published last year by the New England Journal of Medicine. “So why are we still scaring people about salt?”

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Since their inception more than 30 years ago, the salt guidelines have drawn criticism.

Some of the earliest notions that Americans were eating too much salt arose from international comparisons.

It turned out that in some cultures, especially isolated ones, people consumed less salt and had lower blood pressure.

In one influential 1973 paper, University of Michigan anthropologist Lillian Gleiberman collected statistics for 27 different populations. It showed the lowest blood pressures were among African Bushmen, the Chimbu of New Guinea, the Caraja of Brazil and Eskimos. Each consumed exceptionally low levels of salt.

Maybe, Gleiberman suggested, human bodies had not adapted to the higher salt available in modern societies.

“My major hypothesis was that people ate much less salt in prehistoric times,” Gleiberman, now retired, said by phone recently. “And that our bodies may not be prepared for the larger amounts of salt now available to us.”

But she said her paper was intended to inspire more research, not to serve as the basis of dietary guidelines. Those remote peoples, she said, are too different from modern populations to make sound comparisons.

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Quote: Sanguine wrote in post #2

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It's not so much "scientists"; it's more government bureaucrats. We've known for years that salt-sensitivity is actually fairly rare, and occurs mostly in men of African descent.

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Quote: ThirstyMan wrote in post #3

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Jeesh, in one hundred years they're going to look back on us as primitives,

much like we now look back on the days of bloodletting. too much coffee is bad, no, it's good. margarine is better than butter, no it's not, butter is better. salt, sugar, what else?

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