Thanks to it's undeniable status as a superstar ingredient salt is found everywhere in our diet. It acts as a preserver, adds texture, strengthens foods structures, and of course, contributes massive flavour. But too much salt is a bad thing, a really bad thing, and with the amount of salt currently hidden our diet, it's contributing to some pretty large scale diseases. In fact, some scientists have even deemed the silent killer. Tune in to learn why.
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Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music.
Thanks to it's undeniable status as a superstar ingredient salt is found everywhere in our diet. It acts as a preserver, adds texture, strengthens foods structures, and of course, contributes massive flavour. But too much salt is a bad thing, a really bad thing, and with the amount of salt currently hidden our diet, it's contributing to some pretty large scale diseases. In fact, some scientists have even deemed the silent killer. Tune in to learn why.
Want to recommend an episode topic? Send me a message on Instagram @nutritionbitespodcast
Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music.
Welcome to Nutrition Bites. The no nonsense podcast where you get the truth about food so you can eat what you want, and be healthy. I’m your host Maggie and welcome to Episode 21 of this series! Today we are talking about a triple-threat in the food world - it’s a flavour, ingredient, and essential nutrient. On the menu today, salt.
I like to think of myself as a fairly reasonable nutritionist, which means that I never turn down a homemade cookie, and I almost always choose fries over salad. After all, you don’t make friends with salad. Fortunately for my health, I don’t come across home-baked goods that often nor do I order out regularly. But last week, after my home-cooked vegan lentil curry was demolished, I didn’t feel like cooking and so I treated myself to a gluttonous dinner of fried chicken. Now fried foods, and meat in general, aren’t a regular part of my diet, so whenever I give into the craving I really savour the moment. I was beyond excited to tuck into my meal, but after a couple of bites it hit me. This fried chicken was like licking a salt rock. It was SO salty. Far beyond a few extra shakes, more like they accidentally dumped half the salt shaker in the food. Salt is a staple ingredient in just about all foods, but a little can go a long way, and a lot like in the case of my chicken, can take a meal overboard quickly. Too much salt is a common occurrence in the global diet, maybe not in the way I experienced it, but it’shidden everywhere - and this has a huge impact on our health. In fact, it’s been called the silent killer. So let’s take some time to learn more about it.
To start off, we need to understand the difference between salt and sodium. Sodium is a mineral necessary for life. It is an essential nutrient because it helps regulate bodily fluids, transmit signals between nerves, transport nutrients into cells, and relax and contract muscles. Salt on the other hand is a crystal-like compound that is a combo of sodium and another mineral, like chloride. Over 90% of the sodium in our diet comes from salt, so it makes sense that these two terms are often used interchangeably.
Sodium is naturally found in seafood, meat, eggs, and a few vegetables - like beets. Early humans had a fairly low-sodium diet, but over time we learned how to isolate salt from natural sources - like evaporating it from oceans and lakes, and mining it from rock deposits. The large variety of salt available on the market today - including table salt, sea salt, pink salt and black salt- differ due to the extraction and processing methods. And while they may come in different flavours, shapes and sizes, nutritionally they’re pretty equal. I know that may be disappointing considering how fancy sounding pink himalayan salt is, but that’s just another marketing tactic. At the end of the day, it’s still salt. We often associate salty foods with snacks like popcorn, chips, and nuts, but the use of this ingredient is far more widespread than simply adorning our crunchy goodies. In fact, salt has been used in our foods for thousands of years because of a key characteristic: preservation.
In the pre-refrigeration times, which is like...the vast majority of time, preserving foods was a survival technique for humans. From ancient China to Egypt, salt was used to preserve meat and fish. And the reason it’s so good at that is because sodium attracts water, which draws moisture out of the food, creating a dry environment that food-spoiling bacteria can’t survive in. Using salt to preserve foods is still used today - that’s how parma ham and gravlax, or cured salmon, is made. But salt is used in a huge variety of other applications - including adding moisture into meat via brining, improving the strength of the gluten structure in baked goods, and adding texture and of course, flavour to many foods.
Salt is a big flavour on it’s own, but it also plays a supporting role in how we taste other flavours in food. In fact, chefs have deemed salt the universal flavour improver. At high concentrations, salt decreases sweetness and enhances umami - which is why it’s perfect to add to savoury foods. At low concentrations, so low that you don’t taste it all, salt can actually reduce bitterness and increase sour or sweet flavours. It’s effect on enhancing sweetness is why it’s so clutch to add salt to desserts. I promise you, sprinkling flakey sea salt on chocolate chip cookies is the easiest way to level up your baking status.
Because of the many talents that salt has, I mean it’s like the Lady Gaga of minerals, it’s no wonder that it is such a staple ingredient in processed foods. In fact, over 70% of the salt in our diet comes from packaged and prepared products. If you ever saw the documentary Supersize Me, which if you were a student when it was released I feel like you watched it in every health class until you graduated, one of the main critiques of the all-McDonald’s diet in that film was the staggering amount of sodium it contained. One Big Mac, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or Bacon n’egg Bagel from McD’s all individually provide almost half of an adult’s daily intake of sodium. That’s just one item! And even choosing something that is a bit more leafy in nature, isn’t any better. The caesar salad with grilled chicken has the same amount of salt as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. And the BBQ sauce you dip your chicky nugs into? It actually contains more sodium than a medium fries. Crazy right? McDonald’s is not alone though. All fast food relies on added salt for preservation, structural integrity, and flavour. But how much and where it’s found, can be surprising.
Coffee on it’s own is a sodium-free beverage, but how many of the people at Starbucks do you think are getting a black drip? This fast café is known for coffee-flavoured dessert drinks and if you’re a frappuccino kind of person, here’s your spooky salt scoop. The amount of sodium in a Grande Java Chip Frap is equal to that of a medium fries from McDs. And a grande PSL will run you about the same. What’s more salty though, are the snacks. Even the healthy sounding raisin bran muffin or multigrain bagel has almost a quarter of your daily recommended sodium intake. Baked goods, including muffins, breads, bagels, cookies, crackers and granola bars, are notorious for being loaded with salt...even though they rarely taste salty.
In North America, bakery products are the #1 source of sodium in our diet. And number two are foods in the category “mixed dishes” which includes processed foods like pizza, frozen entrees, mac and cheese, and bagged salads (it’s the dressing that sneaks in so much sodium). Surprisingly, salty snacks like potato chips only rank #8 on the top 10 list of sodium sources in the Western diet. Ahead of this snack category are processed meats, cheeses, soups, condiments, and salad dressings. These groups of foods may be a surprise to some because, well, they don’t necessarily taste all that salty. I mean, if these foods tasted as salty as my Friday night fried chicken, it’d be impossible to consume as much sodium as we do. Which is a shame for our health, because all this hidden salt in our heavily processed diet is having an insane impact on our bodies.
Globally, we over consume salt and by extension sodium. The recommended guideline for an adult’s sodium intake is less than 2,300 mg per day. That equals about 5 grams or 1 teaspoon of salt. Yes, a teensy tiny little teaspoon. The vast majority of Americans, Canadians, Australians and Europeans eat at least 1.5x that amount, with some easily doubling the recommendation. So how does it affect us?
One of the ways sodium is able to help regulate body fluids is because its ability to attract water is just as powerful as Facebook attracts the antivaxxer crowd. That means, shortly after eating a super salty meal you may experience bloating, as all the sodium in your digestive tract is holding onto water. Another short-term effect of eating too much salt is a rise in blood pressure. When there is a high level of sodium in your bloodstream it begins to attract water from your cells and surrounding fluids causing the volume of blood to increase, and therefore your blood pressure to rise. Now the body can handle a temporary change in blood volume and pressure just fine but if high blood pressure, also called hypertension, is sustained over a long period over time - it can wreak havoc. Having hypertension over many years can damage artery walls, heart muscle and eventually lead to the development of cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease, also called CVD, is a general term for conditions that affect the heart or blood vessels - this includes things like heart attacks and strokes. You’ve probably heard me talk about CVD in other episodes, but that’s because it is the #1 cause of death globally. In fact, in 2019, one third of all deaths in the world were caused by CVD. It’s normally thought of as a condition for older people, which is when we usually see the effects, but really CVD develops slowly… over decades even! Which means that how you’re eating now, including a high sodium diet, can put you at risk for developing CVD in the future.
Another related illness resulting from a high-sodium diet is kidney disease and kidney failure. Think of your kidneys as your body’s filtration system. You know the undervalued Monopoly card “water works” - those are your kidneys. They operate round the clock to filter out toxins and other molecules from your blood, creating urine as a byproduct. Now, Hypertension caused by excess sodium, puts extra strain on the kidney’s filtering units and can cause irreversible damage, like tissue scarring, and the eventual the death of the organ. In addition to damaging the kidneys, another effect of a high salt diet is osteoporosis - a disease caused by weak bones. Calcium is an important building material for bone, and a high presence of sodium can cause extra calcium to be excreted via the urine. If this happens for a long period of time, then less calcium is available to reinforce and repair your bones, and that can cause a weak skeleton more susceptible to fractures and breaks.
So while a high sodium diet may not impact you today, eating this way over a lifetime can have some very serious health consequences. But before diving into recommendations as to how we can lower our salt intake, which most of us should do, it is important to highlight the specific times when we should be mindful about increasing our sodium intake.
Like I highlighted in Episode 10 on Sports Drinks sodium is the most common electrolyte lost through sweat. This means that when we engage in high intensity, or long distance exercise, it’s important to replenish lost sodium so that our muscles can keep on firing. Another common way sodium is lost is through illnesses that cause us to vomit or have diarrhea. Both of these...let’s call them bodily exit strategies...result in the loss of a LOT of fluid, which includes sodium. Short-term fluid loss can cause muscle aches, nausea, and dizziness, so it’s good to have an electrolyte beverage on hand if you’re experiencing this kind of sickness. In severe cases the low sodium content in our blood can actually lead to shock, coma, and death. Now this doesn’t happen often in developed countries, but in regions with poor or underfinanced healthcare systems, illnesses that cause dehydration can be deadly. For example, in areas with unclean water conditions, residents may contract cholera - a bacterial infection that causes diarrhea. Researchers estimate that each year up to 4 million people contract cholera, and hundreds of thousands of them die. Now death by low sodium by itself, as opposed to through dehydration, is incredibly rare, but it does happen. Certain medications can interfere with the kidneys, and some rare diseases cause an excess excretion of sodium. But one of the most interesting cases is related to Molly. Not 80s actress Molly Ringwald, or supermodel Molly Sims. Your street corner night friend Molly...aka ecstasy. For unknown reasons, ecstasy can cause brain swelling as a result of low sodium levels. It’s super rare, but very scary nonetheless! Now, if I were to bet on what’s more likely to cause you harm - low sodium brain swelling from ecstasy use or the development of CVD from a lifelong diet high in processed foods, I’d bet on the latter. Unless of course, this podcast is a hit with the rave kids, which if that’s the case, cool..thank you. Anyways, the point is, reducing sodium intake is incredibly important for the vast majority of people. So let’s talk about ways to do that.
The simplest way to reduce your sodium intake is to cut back on processed foods - and not just what you think has a lot of salt like fries and chips. I know that’s a pretty tall order, so a less intimidating strategy to start is choosing the lower sodium versions of your favourite foods. Look for “low sodium” nutrient claims on the package and scan the nutrition facts table to choose foods that have 5% or less of your daily dose of sodium per serving. At home, you can adopt additional strategies like rinsing canned beans before using them, flavouring foods with herbs instead of salt, and making items like salad dressings from scratch. If you’re a bit older of a listener, and by older I mean wiser, and you are at risk for hypertension, consider talking to your doctor about the DASH diet. It’s an acronym that stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and it’s a really well-studied and effective way of eating that includes a lot of low sodium strategies. Avoiding salt altogether is unrealistic and, let’s be honest, bland. You can still Salt Bae your steak, crunch on your pink Himalayan salted popcorn, and sprinkle Maldon sea salt falks on your decadent brownies. But just be mindful of ALL the sources of salt in your diet, and start cutting back sooner rather than later .