The EU recommendation is not more than 6 grams of salt a day for normal adults (about one teaspoon). — LORENA MARTINEZ/Pexels
Natriophilia
My grandfather really liked salty foods, and perhaps I have inherited a fraction of his preference for salt. He used to eat steamed salted eggs with salted fish in rice doused with large splashes of soy sauce, a combination so salty it was almost acidic in the mouth, and impossible for me to eat.
He was probably a classic example of someone with natriophilia, or an insatiable hunger for salt. This is a condition which may have epigenetic roots, perhaps due to his mother having a lack of salt in her diet during pregnancy.
The issue of epigenetic roots for various food preferences was researched in 2008 in France, where it was reported that the amount of salt in the diets of women have effects on the brains of their fetuses.
A deficiency of salt during gestation, perhaps occurring in women who are particularly prone to morning sickness and nausea during pregnancy, is highly correlated with offspring with a strong tendency for natriophilia. This epigenetic effect was tested in experiments with rodents, and the same natriophilia phenomena was observed in rodent progeny, and it was dependent on salt levels during pregnancy.
Women who have a diet deficient in salt during their pregnancies often have children with natriophilia, or an insatiable appetite for salty foods. — PIXABAY/Pexels
The absence of salt in the diets of pregnant women appears to alter their infants’ synaptic organization of the neurons in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain associated with motivation, reward perception and addiction. This appears to be the root cause of natriophilia.
Recommended?
Apart from during pregnancy, the EU recommendation is not more than 6 grams of salt a day for normal adults. As salt is sodium chloride, that is the equivalent of 2.4 grams of sodium daily (as salt is a compound of 40% sodium and 60% chlorine). However, there are issues with this recommendation, as explained later.
Salt is one of the ingredients most commonly overused in junk foods, simply because humans tend to prefer foods with stronger flavours, and salt is an ingredient which can emphasise or enhance the flavours of other ingredients. As an example, add some fresh ground pepper to a small amount of hot water, stir well, and taste the mixed water. Now add some salt to the water and taste again. The pepper flavour becomes more “rounded” and flavourful.
As such, adding salt while cooking has been a culinary trick used for centuries. But before that, foods were also routinely preserved with salt to conserve them over winters and times of low food supply. Due to the cost of salt before the 20th century, health syndromes arising from the overconsumption of salt were relatively rare.
However, the ready availability of low-cost salt over the last century or so have caused a rise in diseases arising from salt overconsumption.
One probably knows that overconsumption of salt is linked to high blood pressure (hypertension), and this is because human kidneys are unable to remove excess sodium in the bloodstream quickly enough. This delay causes the body to retain water, which then swells the amount of fluids around cells and increases the volume of blood in the body. This additional volume of blood means more work for the heart and added stress on blood vessels, leading to a higher likelihood of a cardiac arrest or stroke.
Hence, in theory, reduction of dietary sodium should be beneficial for human health in all cases. Unfortunately, various studies have indicated that this is not true. An Italian paper from 2019 investigated the impact of reducing dietary sodium and found that reduced sodium is linked to increased incidences of atherosclerosis and more activations of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, which in turn is linked to higher incidences of heart failure.
Salt was not readily used in cooking before but the availability of low-cost salt has caused a rise in diseases resulting from salt overconsumption. — LOS MUERTOS CREW/Pexels
There is also evidence of more baroceptor stimulations and deactivations, which can cause complications in the monitoring of blood pressure and heartbeat rates, again resulting in cardiac incidents. Additionally, low sodium levels are also linked to insulin resistance and excessively low blood pressure.
Therefore, there appears to be negative effects of too much dietary sodium, and also of too little sodium. Since the introduction of high salt content processed foods, the health focus tends to be on the effects of eating too much salt, but it appears to also be counter-productive to suddenly cut down too quickly (or too much) on salt.
It is therefore feasible that the scale of salt consumption should be adjusted from definitions of “excess” to “inappropriate”. At present, all that is evident is that lowering sodium consumption for the roughly 10% of the human population with hypertension AND with high salt intake would very likely be beneficial. As for the remaining 90% of the population with varying levels of sodium intake but with no discernible health impacts, one might suggest it may not be necessary to offer advice regarding excessive salt consumption.
Hypertension alert?
Such a point may be made by my own grandfather. Despite eating more salt than anyone else I know, he lived till he was 93, with very few health problems. If you are not sure of your own status, get yourself a good home blood pressure monitor and use it regularly. If you do fall into the hypertension bands, and you have been eating too much salty foods, then it may be helpful to cut down on sodium, after consulting medical advice.
A couple of recent papers on salt threw up more negative impacts of over-consumption. A study on rodents found that too much salt can affect the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, a major regulatory system that produces hormones which regulate responses to stress, as well as manage digestion and metabolism, the cardiovascular system and the immune system.
Another somewhat funny study suggested hypertension (perhaps from a high sodium diet) may be causing people to become neurotic rather than neuroticism causing stress and then subsequently high blood pressure.
For years, there is a known link between stress and hypertension, which increases the risk of cardiac illnesses. But it has been claimed that little work had be done to assess which issue came first, the hypertension or the neuroticism.
A diet high in salt has been linked to high blood pressure. — COTTONBRO STUDIO/Pexels
A recent paper in General Psychiatry reviewed psychological surveys, genetic data and blood pressure readings of 736,650 people in Europe and analysed for causative relationships. The claimed outcome was a causal relationship between diastolic blood pressure and neuroticism, from which the study drew a somewhat obvious conclusion that “Individuals with neuroticism more frequently experience high mental stress, which can lead to elevated blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. Appropriate management of BP may reduce neuroticism, neuroticism-inducing mood disorders and cardiovascular diseases.”
Regrettably, the value of the study is extraordinarily low as they did not attempt to lower the blood pressures of people with neuroticism to validate if there are any effects. Still, at least, I suppose we can look forward to the follow-up study one day.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
