Found here, via Insty:
To translate this last study into teaspoons: the finding was that anything between 1-1/2 and 3 tsp of salt per day is just fine, and there were adverse effects from eating more than that or less than that. Most Americans who are not consciously restricting salt fall in this range (1-1/2 to 3 tsp). People who are on low-salt diets for medical reasons are getting as little as 1/2 tsp, and they’re well into the range where dearth of salt is harming them. The worst impact of low salt is on insulin sensitivity. Loss of insulin sensitivity is a big risk factor for all the diseases of old age.
Um.
I've been on a de facto low-salt diet since college, when I started doing my own grocery shopping and, for example, took to buying unsalted butter because my buttered toast was coming out too salty for my taste.
I don't eat much processed food, preferring to buy ingredients and do my own cooking.
So let's have a look at some labels, shall we?
Looks like, in warm weather, I get around 500mg of sodium (mumble mumble... about 1.3 grams of salt, roughly 1/4 tsp) from milk.
I buy and use salt. This here canister says: serving size 1/4 tsp (1.5g); servings per container 491. I'd normally go through such a container every couple of years... with a fair bit of it used for non-food purposes. So, call it about a pinch (1/8 tsp, 0.75g) per day, maybe.
So, absent the occasional salty snack, I'm way down there in salt consumption. If this latest news is right, I'm perhaps not getting enough... and, yes, I've been having loss-of-insulin-sensitivity issues for some time now.
Maybe not getting as much iodide as I should, either.
Oh, and if I drink water instead of milk I tend to get a strange, electrolytes-out-of-whack feeling. Which, now as I think of it, could be sodium-related.
It probably wouldn't hurt to start keeping lightly-salted nuts at my desk again. Or Sun Chips. Just gotta keep an eye on that blood pressure, just in case added salt really does aggravate it.
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