HOW MUCH SALT IS SAFE?

“Eating too much salt is bad for you.” is a mantra that has been repeated many times over by many people, medical professionals and governmental food agencies. In the UK, an organisation of concerned specialist called Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) has been working to reach a consensus with the food industry and Government over the harmful effects of a high salt diet, and bring about a reduction in the amount of salt in processed foods as well as salt added to cooking, and on the table. CASH also plans to run a National Salt Awareness Day at the end of January each year following its January 27 event early this year.

A quick search on the Internet however quickly churns out conflicting information. The Salt Institute, for example, presents at least 11 comprehensive medical studies that documented no health benefits of low salt intake, and that people on low salt diets were just as likely to develop heart attacks as those on normal diets. Only one study supported the sodium hypothesis. An eight-year study on the sodium intake of a hypertensive population in New York even found the opposite to be true - that there were more than four times as many heart attacks reported in the low-salt group that the ‘normal-sodium’ diet group.

So, is salt good or bad for health? Is taking too little or no salt advisable? Is it safe to cut out salt altogether? A fact that all scientists, medical professionals and health watch-groups can agree on is that salt and water are essential for life. According to SaltSense, the UK salt manufacturer’s association setup to set the record straight on salt, we need to maintain around 250g of salt in our bodies just to keep us alive. Salt is vital to health and life. The Sodium helps to regulate our body fluids and in the transmitting of electrical impulses between our brains, nerves and muscles, while Chloride is essential to food digestion. Salt plays an important part in regulating our heartbeats and our metabolism.

So, why and how has salt become the focus for confusing health warnings? One of the concern of CASH is the over consumption of sodium, particularly through processed foods. Few would argue that having too much of a good thing will always lead to trouble. However, digging deeper into the issue uncovered interesting new facts. The salt that we call “common salt” is a relatively recent creation of mankind. It bears little resemblance to natural salt.

Natural salt contains over 80 chemical elements in trace proportions, of which 72 is believed to be essential to the human health. Common salt however is refined salt, chemically cleaned for industrial purposes, to only 2 elements - sodium and chloride – plus additives such as anti-caking agents to make the salt flow better. This human tampering of salt made it less absorbable, thereby upsetting the normal bodily processes, such as blood-fluids regulation and digestion. The salt that has been linked to a plethora of unhealthy conditions, such as swollen joints, stomach cancer and high blood pressures, is this refined salt (sodium chloride), not natural salt.

There are over 14,000 uses for sodium chloride. In the sodium chloride industry, only 4-6% is used in the food industry, in processed foods and as table salt. The large scale of the industry has made refined salt a cheap alternative to natural salt. This is probably why people, and particularly the food processing industry, have turned to refined salt over the past 150 years or so. Natural salt is hand ground using ceramic/stone mills, which is a slow process, and has a greyish-pinkish appearance.

Recently, a variety of natural salt has been re-discovered through the study of German biophysicists Dr. Barbara Hendel and Peter Ferreira. In their book, “Water and Salt – the essence of life”, they documented the health-promoting effects of Himalayan crystal salts, specifically those found in the Eastern Karakoram Range. These salts occur as massive crystalline complexes that are at least 250 millions years old when layers of ancient sea salts were metamorphosed in the depths of the Himalayas. Chemically, they contain over 70 trace elements that are essential to human health, and varying proportions of potassium and iron. In solution, they resemble the composition of our body fluids, such as blood plasma and extra-cellular fluids, as well as that of the ancient ocean, from where life began. Earlier on, the American naturalist Rachel Carlson has echoed this discovery when she wrote that all land animals “carried part of the sea in their bodies” in her book, “The Sea Around US”.

According to Prentice Stout of Rhode Island University Sea Grant Research, Salt is an essential component of human diets. All fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals carry within their veins the elements of sodium, potassium, and calcium in almost the same proportions as the oceans. The "sea" within us has the same saltiness as the Precambrian seas of three billion years ago. For humans, salt is as essential as water. We can perish from too little salt as we can of thirst. Salt regulates the exchange of water between our cells and their surrounding fluids and is important in the functioning of muscles, nerve cells and digestive system. Our kidneys and skin in turn regulate the amount of salt in our bodies.

Early human societies placed high value on salt. Over 2000 years ago, Greek medicine had already discovered topical use of salt for skin lesions, drinking salty or mineralized waters for digestive troubles and inhaling salt for respiratory diseases. Roman soldiers were paid wages in salt (origin of the word “salary”). The Celtic word for salt, hall (now embedded in the mineral name for salt, halite) actually meant “sacred”. Crystal salt was so highly regarded that it was used for medicinal purposes, religious ceremonies, and reserved for royalty. Crystal salt was also called King Salt; the common people got rock salt, a lower grade natural salt. In recent years, crystal salt, sea salt and a variety of natural salts (or naturalised salts) have grown in popularity among the health-conscious and wellness communities in Europe, North America, Australia-New Zealand and more recently, Asia. It must be noted however that the older population in many parts of Asia, such as Pakistan and India, had continued to use natural salt both as food and medicine.

Because of their composition and ionic nature, drinking crystal salt solution – in German, “sole” (pronounced ‘so-lay’ and literally, “liquid sunlight”) – as a habit have been found to enhance vitality and balance blood pressures. Tests like the nine-week double-blind university study undertaken in 2003 at the Inter-University of Graz, Austria, which examined the effects of patients drinking a minimum of 1.5 litres of tap water per day with common table salt compared to a minimum of 1.5 litres of pure water with Himalayan crystal salt on physical and psychological functions of the body found the crystal salt group showed significant positive changes in respiratory, circulatory, organ, connective tissue and nervous system functions. Patients also reported increases in the quality of sleep, and energy throughout the day.

So, is salt good or bad for health? How much is a safe level? Organisations like CASH are recommending 1600 mg/day (about 4g salt) as the maximum intake of sodium for adults. This is now the UK Ministry of Health’s Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI). Presently, the British public consumes an average of 9-12g per day. The US National Academy of Science meanwhile recommends that Americans consume at least 500 mg of salt per day to maintain good health. They also reported a human salt tolerance of between 250 to 30,000 mg/day. Perhaps, instead of worrying about how much salt is safe, we should be looking at what kind of salt we consume. The trend fortunately is towards natural foods and moderation.