Just Kick the Salt Habit

[Guest guest]

Just Kick the Salt Habit

by multiple authors

http://www.living-foods.com/articles/kicksalt.html

 

This article is about Salt. Yes, this includes normal " iodized

salt " , and " Sea Salt " either refined or unrefined. Most people into

raw foods that are serious about their health do not consume salt in

their diet. If you want a salty flavor to foods, you can add a salty

vegetable such as salcornia, celery or try using some sea

vegetables.

 

Sodium chloride (salt) consumption. One is that Stone-Age men and

women did not consume supplemental dietary sodium chloride (salt),

which like protein can also cause increased calciuresis (calcium

excretion) [Nordin et al. 1993] and loss of bone mass [Devine et al.

1995]. Because the kidney must obligatorily excrete calcium with

sodium [Nordin et al. 1993], high levels of dietary sodium are now

generally recognized to be the single greatest dietary risk factor

for osteoporosis [Matkovic et al. 1995; Devine et al. 1995;

Cappuccio 1996]. It should go without saying that in this

context, " high " levels of dietary sodium are simply normal levels in

Western societies.

 

 

Paul Bragg N.D. Ph.D.

" How to keep your heart healthy and fit "

THE TRUTH ABOUT SALT

Would you use sodium, a caustic alkali, to season your food? Or

chlorine, a

poisonous gas? " Ridiculous questions, " you say. " Nobody would be

foolhardy

enough to do that. "

Of course not. But the shocking truth is that most people do so...

because they

don't know that these powerful chemicals constitute the inorganic

crystaline

compound—salt.

For centuries, the expression " salt of the earth " has been used as a

catch-all

phrase to designate something good and essential. Nothing could be

more

erroneous. For that harmless product that you shake into your food

every day may

actually bury you. Consider these startling facts:

 

1. SALT IS NOT A FOOD! There is no more justification for its

culinary use

than there is for potassium chloride, calcium chloride, barium

chloride, or any

other harmful chemical to season food.

2. Salt cannot be digested, assimilated, or utilized by the body.

Salt has no

nutritional value! SALT HAS NO VITAMINS! NO ORGANIC MINERALS! NO

NUTRIENTS OF ANY KIND! Instead, it is positively harmful and may

bring on troubles in the kidneys, bladder, heart, arteries, veins,

and blood vessels. Salt may waterlog the tissues, causing a

dropsical condition.

3. Salt may act as a heart poison. It also increases the

irritability of the

nervous system.

4. Salt acts to rob calcium from the body and attacks the mucous

lining

throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract.

SALT IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO LIFE

It is frequently claimed that salt is essential for the support of

life.

However, there is no information available to substantiate this

viewpoint. The truth is that entire races (primitive peoples) use

absolutely no salt today and have not used it throughout their

entire history. If salt were essential to life, these races would

have become extinct long ago. The fact that they are not only alive

but have far better health than other races, would seem to indicate

that the supposed " necessity " of salt is a commercially-inspired

invention or merely the product of the imagination.

WHAT SALT DOES TO YOUR STOMACH

An important objection to salt is the fact that it interferes with

the normal digestion of food. Pepsin, an enzyme found in the

hydrochloric acid of the stomach, is essential for the digestion of

proteins. When salt is used, only 50% as much pepsin is secreted as

would otherwise be the case. Obviously, under such conditions,

digestion of protein foods is incomplete or too slow. The result is

excessive putrefaction of protein and, in some instances, gas and

digestive distress.

THE SALT HABIT IS A DEADLY HABIT—BREAK IT!

People undoubtedly would not add inorganic salt to their food if

they were never

taught to do so in the first place. The taste for salt is an

acquired one. When salt is eliminated from the diet for a short

time, the craving for it ceases. It is only during the first few

weeks after table salt is discontinued that it is really missed...

after that, abstinence is of little difficulty. In fact, many of my

health students... who have broken the deadly salt habit... write me

that NOW they cannot stand salted foods! When someone serves them

salted food, it gives them an abnormal thirst for liquids.

 

Harvey Diamond

" Fit For Life "

Q. Just how harmful is table salt?

A. The Egyptians used salt for embalming. Let's take the hint! This

year Americans will consume five hundred million pounds of salt.

That's a lot of embalming. Salt is everywhere and in everything from

pet food to baby food. Salt is a major contributing factor to the

increasing incidence of hypertension, or high blood pressure, in

this country. It is so caustic to the sensitive inner tissues of the

body that water is retained to neutralize its acidic effect. This

adds weight to the body. Overuse of salt can contribute to a severe

affliction of the kidneys called nephritis.

 

 

" Health Magic Through Chlorophyll "

Dr. Bernard Jensen:

SALT—Table salt should be dropped from the diet. We do not need it

when we have plenty of greens everyday. To change from it, use

vegetized salt purchased in your health food store. Vegetable

concentrates in powdered form and herbs are also excellent

seasonings.

Dr. Dicky in South Africa found that he could trade for anything he

wanted from the Pygmies with salt. However, when he began giving

them plenty of green vegetables, their desire for salt lessened and

he could no longer bargain with salt alone because it had lost its

value to them. Still further, we find that deer are not attracted to

salt licks when they have the greens of the field. It is during the

dry grass season, when the chlorophyll is lacking, that they desire

this salt. Liquid chlorophyll contains the most potent, vital cell

salts a person can take into the body. When we crave salt, I feel it

is because the body doesn't have all the elements it should have

from these greens.

 

Henry Lindlahr

" The Practice of Nature Cure "

Vinegar and Condiments Injurious. Green vegetables are most

beneficial when eaten raw with a dressing of lemon juice and olive

oil. Avoid the use of vinegar. It is a product of fermentation, and

a powerful preservative which regards digestion as well as

fermentation, both processes being very much the same in character.

Lemon juice being a live vegetable product, rich in vitamins,

promotes digestion.

Do not use pepper, salt or sugar on fruits and vegetables at the

table. They may

be used sparingly in cooking, . Strong spices and condiments are

more or less

irritating to . the mucous linings of the intestinal tract. They

gradually benumb the nerves of taste. At first they stimulate the

digestive organs, but like all other stimulants, produce in time

weakness and atrophy. Fruits and vegetables are rich in all the

mineral salts in the live, organic form, and therefore the addition

of inorganic mineral table salt is not only superfluous but

positively harmful.

 

John T. Richter

" Nature The Healer "

Q. Would it not be all right to put a little salt on one's food if

it seemed to taste " flat " otherwise?

A. Table salt, and all other salts except those found in their

organic stages in fruits and vegetables, are inorganic substances

which cannot be assimilated by the body and must be discarded by the

bloodstream at the earliest opportunity.

Usually the salt is deposited in the joints, particularly the knees,

elbows, ankles, wrists, and the like, resulting later in arthritis

and rheumatism. It makes no difference whether you have gotten your

salt in the form of the table variety, or as saleratus (bichloride

of soda) in hot biscuits, or Epsom salts prescribed for internal use

in cases of constipation; all are productive of the same injurious

results. What is the first symptom of salt deposits in the joints?

Do they crack when you do a knee bend? If so, your joints are

commencing to become dry due to the salt deposits having absorbed

all the synovial fluid which acts as a lubricant in those regions.

Salt has a tremendous attraction for water and all other liquids. No

wonder doctors prescribe innumerable glasses of water daily so that

their patients may to some extent satisfy the incessant craving for

liquid caused by the salt they are eating. Remember that salt may

dissolve in water and in the saliva of the mouth, but it will

recrystallize within a very short time and under no circumstances

will it be absorbed into the bodily structure. It will collect

wherever there is room for it to be deposited,

but it will no more be absorbed than sand is absorbed by the gears

into which you may have thrown it. Salt, in its effect, is like that

of sand in gears; it irritates and slowly but surely destroys. Our

bodies are wonderful machines, self-oiling, provided we furnish the

food out of which the oil may be manufactured and stop abusing them.

You ask, " Do we need salt? Is not salt present in the healthy

bloodstream? "

True, but you must get your salt from the vegetable or fruit, which

in turns gets it from the earth. Your bloodstream will not require

checking provided you eat natural, uncooked foods. Nature will take

from these exactly the right amount of salt which is needed, and no

more. In the first place, it is organic, and therefore usable in the

building up of the body; in the second place, as mentioned, there

will never be an excess of salts no matter how much live food you

may eat.

 

Hygienic Review

Vol. XXXIV October, 1973 No. 7

SALT EATING PERNICIOUS

Herbert M. Shelton

In their effort to supply a basis for the salt eating habit men who

call themselves scientists uncritically repeat the popular folklore

that wild animals seek out " salt licks " to obtain salt. Salt eating

is an acquired habit and serves no useful purpose. The practice of

eating salt has never been universal.

Thoreau says he gave up salt eating when he found that the Indians

did not use it. It is highly probable that he was influenced in this

as much by Graham as by the Indians.

In his Eskimo Life, Stefansson, the famous arctic explorer,

says: " After you have been a month or so without salt you cease to

long for it, and after six months I have found the taste of meat

boiled in salt water distinctly disagreeable. No Eskimo will touch

salt if he can help doing so. Many other people have existed for

ages without taking salt.

One who has been accustomed to adding salt to his food finds

unsalted food dull, flat, insipid and tasteless until his sense of

taste has regained its normal tone. Robinson Crusoe had no salt and,

at first, he found food unappetizing. The giant crawfish which he

caught were unpalatable.

Naturalists inform us that in some parts of the earth, certain

animals, such as the elephant, African antelopes, etc., do frequent

and lick certain places.

Analyses of these " licks " show that sodium chloride (common table

salt) is frequently lacking in them. The different " licks " contain

different minerals, such as phosphorus, manganese, copper, sulphate,

magnesium, nickel and iron. As the " licking " process is not

universal, but is confined to a few restricted places in the earth,

and as the animals can make no constructive use of the elements

existing in the " licks " , the licking habit, where observed, is

probably in the nature of a perversion. I have been assured that

deer sometimes lick the salt flats of Utah, but here, also, the salt

in these flats is not all sodium chloride. As the flats are

certainly not within reach of all the animal population of America

and, as " licks " are not found elsewhere, we need not take seriously

the myth that animals supply their alleged need for salt by

visiting " salt licks " . We cannot determine the normal needs of

animal life by recourse to the rare practices of a few animals in

those extremely infrequent places where mineral outcroppings exist.

We know that animals do not mine Salt and do not ship it great

distances to supply their alleged needs, as we do. Science is the

ever-subservient handmaiden of commercialism and we should not be

surprised by the fact that the scientists can find and have found

jurisdiction, even if only fictional, for all the practices that are

fostered by the commercial world for profit.

Before the coming of the white man to this continent most Indians

knew not the taste of salt, and the few that had and employed salt,

did not add it to their foods. Even today in parts of Alaska,

Canada, Mexico and South America, the Indians still manifest a

distaste for this substance. It is also well known among students of

the subject that the Bedouin people regard the use of salt as

ridiculous. Great numbers of instances of this kind, some of them

reaching back into prehistory and involving great numbers of

generations, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that man does not

require the addition of salt (sodium chloride) to his food or to be

taken in drink or as pills. Great numbers of tribes in tropical and

desert regions have existed for ages without taking salt, proving

that we do not require it to resist heat. Indeed, the supposed need

for salt in hot weather and in hot climates is a very recent modern

notion.

Among the Indians there were a few tribes along our western coast

that had and

employed salt. They administered it as a magic potion, not as a part

of their daily diet. Their medicine men employed it in their sorcery

to drive out devils from the bodies of the sick. It was not

administered internally. Could its " use " by other parts of the world

and at other periods of man's existence have originated in the same

way? This is most likely. I cannot offer any strong support of this

view. In view of the most probable origin of the " use " of all other

condiments, there is reason to believe that the Indian medicine man

was not the first to introduce salt in his sorcery. Its " use "

antedates recorded history, but, it is a fact that whole tribes and

even whole nations of men during this vast period of time, have not

known the taste of salt. This is due more to the fact that the

medicine men of these tribes had not discovered it

than to any credit that belongs to them for not introducing it to

man. I once thought that it may have come into general " use " among

those people who do take it, as a result of eating foods that had

been salted to preserve them, man having, by some accident,

discovered that the addition of quantities of salt to flesh and

certain other foods would preserve these. At present it seems more

likely that salt was added to these foods, originally, not as a

preservative, but to impart its magical virtues to these foods. Its

antibiotic (preservative) qualities were thus made known.

The mountains of facts of contemporary animal life and of the

history of man, which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that salt

eating is not essential to life, even that the eating of this

inorganic mineral is definitely injurious, are ignored by our so-

called scientists who continue to urge us to take this substance

with our foods. Only in a few states of disease are " salt-free "

diets advised by physicians and not all physicians are agreed that

such diets are beneficial. Once a mistake becomes a part of

established science, it is next to impossible to weed it out.

Science does not like to admit its mistakes; it does not like to

surrender its pet illusions. It is as cock-sure that we need sodium

chloride in the form of ordinary table salt as it is that we must

have flesh foods. People who desire to live rationally will simply

have to ignore the

decrepit old hag and go on ahead of her.

Trall gave it as his opinion of salt as a " dietetic " article

that " it is worse than useless-common opinion, and the frequent

assertions of medical books to the contrary notwithstanding. " He

pointed out that the " free use of salt irritates the mouth, throat,

and stomach, causing thirst and fever, and provoking unnatural

appetite, while it loads the circulating fluids with a foreign

ingredient, which the excretory organs must labor inordinately to

get rid of. "

In his day the antiseptic quality of salt was much to the fore and

this quality was often adduced as evidence in favor of its use.

Trall declared that " this is precisely the quality that renders it

most unfit for nutritive purposes. "

There is no doubt of the need for various salts by the animal

organism, but these must be taken as organic salts, as synthesized

by fruits and vegetables; not as inorganic, as taken from the sea or

salt mines. Sodium chloride, formerly called muriate of soda (this

term was particularly applied to sea salt, the word muria meaning

brine) is but one salt; we need several. Why do we make so much ado

about our supposed need for one salt and ignore all the others? The

salts of calcium, phosphorus, silica, iodine, magnesium, etc. are

removed from our foods by the milling and processing of foods and by

various cooking processes.

Were the organic salts left in our foods, and these are the only

salts that are usable by the animal body, we would not feel

the " need " to add sodium chloride to our foods to make them

palatable. Certainly the addition of this salt to our foodstuffs

does not compensate for the deficiency of the other salts that our

regular diets present.

The use of salt imposes considerable exertion upon the body in

eliminating it, for it is not readily excreted. It tends to

accumulate in the body so that the organism finds it necessary to

retain within itself a superfluous quantity of water to dilute the

retained salt and thus defend itself against this substance.

A hidden edema (one that is often not so hidden) is the result of

salt intake, giving one a body-weight that is composed of a

considerable amount of water rather than healthy flesh.

The increased flow of saliva, gastric juice and mucus that follows

the; taking of salt, as well as of other condiments, is due to the

effort to dilute and wash away the irritant substance, the juices

containing no digestive enzymes. Instead of accelerating the

digestive processes, as is commonly believed, the use of such

substances retards digestion. Their use, under any and all

circumstances and conditions, is always an evil.

All fruits and vegetables in their natural state abound in organic

salts of various kinds, and a diet composed of these substances will

amply supply the body with all needed salt.

 

No deficiency of mineral salts can arise if one eats freely of

uncooked fruits and vegetables, nor will one 'feel " the " need " for

the addition of table salt to his food. These salts of fruits and

vegetables are in forms that may be utilized by the animal organism

in the building of tissue.

They are foods, not irritants.