Salt Intake

[ysabetwordsmith]

... has a fairly narrow range, not greatly affected by diet.

I'd be happy if restaurants quit over-salting their food, because I've had some bad experiences with it.  I can't eat things that are too salty; it makes me desperately thirsty until the excess gets flushed out. >_<  Conversely, it takes very little to run down the supply.  When I work outside in warm weather, that little bit of sweating is enough to make me want salt.  I'll come indoors, eat 3 potato chips, and be fine.  Based on my observations of other people, I thought my range was much narrower, but maybe it's not that far off and other people are just less alert to their range.

Anyhow, efforts to minimize sodium in the body by manipulating diet are unlikely to work, as it is not controlled by diet but instead by biochemistry.  I would say, try to avoid excessive  salt, but don't try to force it down artificially low.  Even with excessive salt, it won't stay put -- the body flushes it out.  The documented range is really quite stable.

Comments

[jeshyr]

I can document that it's hard to raise it up. My cardiologist recommends 8-10g per day for folk like me because my BP is so low, and that's a LOT to eat and it still doesn't raise it much

O_O

[ysabetwordsmith]

*shudder*

Talk about an exercise in futility! If your body doesn't want more salt, it doesn't stick. It just makes your kidneys work harder to hose out the excess.

[alatefeline]

I eat what I think is an absurd amount of salt but is probably well within the typical range for anyone with significant processed/prepared food intake - probably an instinctive search for minerals and/or an attempt to counteract the dizziness / fluctuating blood pressure side effect of my medications - and it routinely fixes me feeling dizzy or wobbly, but it doesn't stay fixed. Tasty, to me anyway, though.

[gatheringrivers]

I've liberally added salt to my cooking, simply because I do so much from scratch these days between my food issues and preferring to be low carb. I rarely have restaurant food just because navigating what's edible for me is SOOOO challenging.

I doubt I'm exceeding the range as much as there's simply no other intake of "sodium" in my diet for the most part.

[witchka]

The only truly alarming salt intake I've ever seen was my grandfather, the man clearly thought it was dip for his chips or something (fries, not the other kind). It was sometimes piled so high I thought Lot's wife was having a visit.

[krait]

...I dip mine in salt. XD

[witchka]

his was sometimes several millimetres thick, it wasn't just a normal roll in salt.

[dorchadas]

I remember a similar article about how fat consumption did fall after government recommendations on dietary fat changed (like 10% lower in the 90s than the 70s), but salt consumption remained roughly the same, so that there's an actual biological process behind that doesn't seem so surprising.

Makes me feel better about having a bowl of miso soup and pickles as part of my breakfast every morning, too!

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Fat consumption may change, but if the goal is weight loss, it doesn't help much. Changing the body's mass temporarily is possible if you exert enough effort, but over the long term it's almost impossible. There's another biological lock there which humans can't control directly. Eventually the metabolism slows down to cope with what the body thinks is a famine.

This is why weight loss has an execrable 5% success rate over the long term, and in fact actively makes matters worse because most people gain back more than they lost. >_<

The only medical intervention that really works is bariatric surgery, which is only suitable in extreme cases. Another option is lifestyle changes. Not a temporary diet, but a shift to healthier eating; not an exercise program, but an active life. Frex, cooking at home is associated with healthier weight than eating out frequently, because there's less added junk in the food. People in physically demanding careers, like construction workers, don't tend to carry much extra weight. These changes are not easy to make in a society that runs on processed foods and pays -- or physically forces -- people to sit still all day, but looking at clusters of people who do such things, the success rate seems considerably higher than 5%.

Another factor, under increasing suspicion as scientists realize how anchored weight seems to be, is that something has shifted in the food supply and/or environment to raise the set level of weight. High-fructose corn syrup has been implicated because it can affect appetite and fat storage. Endocrine disrupters and trace hormones have been accused, because hormones influence weight, but there's not as much study evidence there yet.

Some types of public policy can influence food choices. I'm not in favor of banning things outright, but I like the idea of making them less convenient, such as moving junk food restaurants to the fringes instead of the highest traffic areas. The catch is, all the studies I've seen crowing about the improvements of such policies are short-term ones, 6-12 months. To find out if they really work, you need at least 5 years. Otherwise you're not looking at a permanent improvement but rather that short-term loss that most diets can produce. You have to watch and see if people actually lose weight from eating healthier or if they just make up the calories elsewhere; and if they lose, whether it stays off permanently.

It's hard to make good policies when we don't understand all the science behind the dynamics yet, and that's before the lobbies get involved. :/ Salt, fat, sugar, it doesn't matter much what people are arguing over in the moment -- they all come down to biology, and we don't know enough about that as we need to. That lack is causing problems.

Re: Well ...

[dorchadas]

I've read up a lot on this, as one of those people who did make a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes and dropped my weight by 25% and have kept it off for six years now, and I remember reading that even lab animals on controlled diets have higher weights now than they did decades ago, so some kind of environmental factor seems highly likely. As to what it is, well, we didn't know the chemical process for why people felt hungry until relatively recently, so I suspect narrowing it down will take a long time.

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I've read up a lot on this, as one of those people who did make a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes and dropped my weight by 25% and have kept it off for six years now, <<

Wow! That's quite an accomplishment.

My goals are different, but I've made dietary changes and got good results from them. Muesli hot cereal as a lunch staple has been particularly effective.

>> and I remember reading that even lab animals on controlled diets have higher weights now than they did decades ago, so some kind of environmental factor seems highly likely. <<

I had not heard about that. :C 3q3q3q!!!

>> As to what it is, well, we didn't know the chemical process for why people felt hungry until relatively recently, so I suspect narrowing it down will take a long time. <<

Yeah. We don't have a way to turn off appetite yet. There's a brain implant in progress that's supposed to do that. Trouble is, if it only turns off the alarm and doesn't change the metabolism then all it will do is make a lot of people faceplant from low blood sugar. That's not helpful.

I think that part of the problem is we've divorced most people from raising and cooking food, which has greatly eroded the quality of food available. Another part is that we've totally changed lifestyle from most people being active much of the time to most people being inactive. In the name of "safety" so much physical activity has been curtailed that it kills people with flab. >_< Unless we fix those things, nagging individuals will do fuckall good.

There's hope, though. I discovered that a park near me has put in a bunch of new stuff: a playground, better parking, butterfly gardens. The levee trail is a wide paved mixed-use path now. I saw people on skates, scooters, skateboards, bicycles -- it made me smile just to watch them. :D We need so much more of this. Huh, I wonder if I could get them to install a climbable sculpture or two? We've got the university and art students who work in metal right here.

Re: Well ...

[dorchadas]

A climbable sculpture sounds amazing...but it also reminds me of the podcast I was listening to with Danish video game devs where they talked about how litigious Americans are. But I've read all sorts of literature about the benefits of unstructured, even dangerous, play in children and how constant parental surveillance makes them physically safer but mentally more fragile, and I wonder if that's true of adults too, even beyond the physical health benefits.

Muesli hot cereal as a lunch staple has been particularly effective.

That does sound good!

I'm lucky that I don't mind eating the same thing repeatedly, so I always eat a Japanese-style breakfast (salted fish, miso soup, rice, pickles I make myself with a tsukemonoki) and the same lunch (salad with two vegetables, an egg, feta cheese, and sliced chicken with dark chocolate for dessert). It give some flexibility with dinner and makes planning easy

I had not heard about that. :C 3q3q3q!!!

Here's a quick pop-science article about it, which talks about animals all over but does specifically mention marmosets at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center as an example of animals on controlled diets still gaining weight.

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> A climbable sculpture sounds amazing...but it also reminds me of the podcast I was listening to with Danish video game devs where they talked about how litigious Americans are.<<

Yes, that's a problem. However, a climbable sculpture doesn't have to be tall -- there are ones designed for toddlers.

Here's an example of a good one for ages 5-12. It looks high, but it's actually around the maximum 6' fall height currently recommended.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8697/17212263061_8fece513c0_c.jpg

This is the kind intended for toddlers:

http://www.cre8play.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MallOG-1.jpg

>> But I've read all sorts of literature about the benefits of unstructured, even dangerous, play in children and how constant parental surveillance makes them physically safer but mentally more fragile, and I wonder if that's true of adults too, even beyond the physical health benefits. <<

It doesn't make them physically safer. People often think it does, but studies show a number of counterpoints including but not limited to:

* Lack of vigorous large-body motion results in muscle and nerve problems.

* Obesity ruins health.

* Overly-safe playgrounds bore children, who then do one of two unfortunate things:
** Stop playing.
** Climb all over the boring stuff in an attempt to make it less boring, in ways it was never meant for, thus making it much more dangerous than traditional equipment.

* Over-protected children do not develop necessary situational awareness, proprioception, and other skills necessary to make judgement calls and stay safe.

As an example, most equipment now uses plastic slides because metal heats up. In addition to plastic leaching chemicals with unfortunate effects, this also deprives children of a basic lesson in physics and safety. Metal heats up in the sun, so you need to check whether it is hot before jumping on it. A playground is something children see often enough to learn that lesson effectively. The world is full of other metal, but the exposure isn't consistent -- they'll burn themselves on a rail, on a car hood, on a bench, etc. because those are all different things. In a park you figure out fast that the slide, merry-go-round, and monkeybars are all things you should check for heat, and with those examples, it's easier to generalize.

Another one we learned: Don't screw around on the slide or you could break your arm. A classic playground was pretty safe unless you did stuff you'd been warned not to do. About once a year, someone in school would screw around and break an arm. Okay, that's aggravating. But it reminded the rest of us not to do that -- and a broken arm is a typical childhood injury, not something life-threatening. Sure, it's possible for someone to die on a playground, but lots of people die at home.

The world isn't safe; it can't be made safe. We can and should make an infant room safe, but once they start toddling it's time for them to start learning how to stay safe. Don't touch the hot stove. Don't put everything in your mouth. Infantilizing people harms them by preventing development which is necessary for health. Then people blame college students for being immature, which is just vicious. Of course they're immature, they were forcibly prevented from growing up at a healthy pace, and then expected to do it all overnight. >_<

>>I'm lucky that I don't mind eating the same thing repeatedly, so I always eat a Japanese-style breakfast<<

Awesome.

>>Here's a quick pop-science article about it, which talks about animals all over but does specifically mention marmosets at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center as an example of animals on controlled diets still gaining weight.<<

Yikes. O_O That touches on some stuff I knew, like the endocrine disruptors, but there's a lot of new info here. I find the wide spread of species and environments particularly alarming.