I could use the same argument to try to outlaw cars.
When someone complains about smokers outdoors, I ask them if they drove there to complain, then offer a deal. They sit in their car with the exhaust plumbed into the window, I'll sit in a box smoking a fat cigar, last one breathing wins the debate.
Oddly, no one ever takes me up on that, but at least they all sheepishly drop their complaints.

As to banning it in private homes, this is a terribly slippery slope that gives power to others to decide what's dangerous to you....now consider getting too little sleep has proven to be harmful, so why not a legally enforced bed time based on the youngest or oldest person on your block? Your second hand noise might keep them up, harming them, so night night time is now 6pm. Consider all the food issues you mentioned as second hand groceries, because children have little option but to eat what parents supply, so no more sugar, salt, or processed foods in the stores because they might buy them.

The questions about health and safety vs freedom to be unhealthy are not simple ones to resolve, and it's impossible to fully safeguard both.

The difference between smoking and say, drinking alcohol or eating unhealthy food, is that I can drink alcohol or eat cheeseburgers all day and I'm really harming no-one but myself.

"Ah, but people drive drunk and get in fights and do stupid things and cause all sorts of trouble"
Agreed, and we have laws against all those things. If you get drunk and kill someone, off to jail with you.

"Yes, but fat people are an enormous cost on the health system"
This is hard to discuss without going into the whole healthcare mess in the US, but as a broad point, it's nigh impossible to legislate against unhealthy behaviours to ones self. Where do you stop? Eating meat? Salt? Not exercising enough? What about people with disabilities?

But smoking? That directly and provably harms OTHER people in the same environment as you and they really have no recourse. If I walked into a public square swinging a sword around, it's not reasonable to say other people should just get out of my way.

So ultimately, as much as I dislike government legislating what you do to yourself (read my post history, I'm very pro-drug), I am ok with legislating that you cannot do something that harms other people in a public place.

Hell, I'd go further. I'm ok with government legislating that you can't smoke in your own home if, for example, you have kids. They didn't ask to live there, and it was your decision to have them, so sorry, no smoking for you.

And yeah, I'd say the same about alcohol. If your drinking is harming your children, then maybe you shouldn't have kids anymore.

Interesting but not terribly useful without context (on the smaller scale, 1L of vodka is pretty easy to understand).

How much venom does a hornet typically release in one attack? Obviously not the lethal dose but still, it'd be more interesting to visualise how many hornet stings it takes to kill me.

How much caffeine in a typical cup of coffee? How much salt in an average wrap? etc

The supplement you are after is called "salt", put it on your food...

; )

I have low blood pressure too, as well as a low body temp (normal for me is 80/40 and 95°F). I don't get light headed unless something causes it to drop farther (which would probably happen to someone with a "normal" blood pressure). It just "idles" low, but as soon as I become active, it ramps up to 120/60.

It always freaks nurses out when I go to the doctor and they take my blood pressure and temp.

I rarely ever add extra salt to food, but after hearing that low sodium can be bad too, maybe I should see about taking some sort of sodium supplement.

Here's the study he's talking about in the video: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311889?query=featured_home&#Results=&t=articleBackground

It looks like a legitimate study, but being correlational it should be taken with a grain of salt *snare drum, splash cymbal* As corrolation cannot show causation.

They seem to control for various factors like age, cholesterol level and previous hypertension too, so they don't appear to be fudging any results.

Perhaps I could argue they aren't measuring salt intake, but rather sodium excretion, and estimating intake based on urine samples. So there is potentially a huge difference in diet - a lot of the participants were from Asia, where they don't tend to use table salt (they use soy sauce instead) And even though it's still high in sodium, soy sauce could be going through a different process inside the body. (Similar to how sugar doesn't cause an insulin spike when it's in fruit form, but does when it's refined form). It's possible that the salt from soy could be passing through the body rather than settling in the blood stream. I'm just speculating. Or perhaps they are also eating other foods which are protective against moderate salt intake, allowing more of it to be excreted than absorbed.

Either way it's very interesting to me :-)

What I would like to see is a study on foods, rather than ingredients to get a better picture. Because humans don't usually eat individual minerals, and combinations of minerals seem to act differently in the body.


I guess what it's all saying though is if you are healthy, then 3-6g of salt is fine, but once you are at risk of CVD you need to back off in order to reverse the damage. But CVD is of course not the only disease people need to be careful about (although it is the #1 we should be worrying about), but salt also feeds various cancers etc.

Your taste buds adjust within about a week, and things actually begin to taste better, because you can taste the flavours of the actual ingredients instead of just salt.

If you gradually ease off the salt, you never even notice (until you eat something that isn't salt reduced, and it will taste way too salty).


It's a lot easier than using a penis pump or popping viagra's later in life ;-)

why is it always about people with high blood pressure? I have low blood pressure, which at times makes me light-headed, but if I eat a little extra salt, my blood volume increases and everything is cool. So salt isn't "healthy" or "unhealthy". All depends on what your body's needs are. Same with sugar... if your body NEEDS sugar (I.E. after a workout to give a little insulin spike to help absorb protein) then it's healthy, if your body DOESN'T NEED sugar, (I.E. you've been sitting in bed all day playing WOW and want to get a mountain dew) then it will be unhealthy.

Your video, HCT: Salt Recommendations Don't Line Up with Recent Evidence, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

can we stick with measuring either sodium or salt intake please.

Healcare Triage disagrees:
1) Dietary Salt Recommendations Don't Line Up with Recent Evidence.
2) HCT News #1: Eat More Salt

Eat well, stay fit, and DIE anyway. I'd rather live 50 years as a free man, than 100 years in a prison. Pass the salt, please.

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The article I read had a little over 1 gram of salt in a 30g serve of cheese for one Halloumi cheese tested, which is indeed over 25% of the heart foundation's recommendation of a 4g limit for salt if you have hypertension (although not over 25% of the far more generous limits advised for the healthy).

That was only one cheese though, and there's really no need for cheese producers to add quite that much.

Um...you're still totally wrong because you didn't list any amounts. One gram of cheese, one pound, one wheel? What? One cube of cheese, no where near 25% RDA, a large bowl of velveta, probably more than 50%.
Just listing numbers is meaningless if you don't include the meaningful ones.

Yes, cheese has salt, quite a bit, and too much is certainly bad for health(not as bad as none, but that's an impossibility today). That doesn't actually confirm your claims, though.

You have one hyper vegan guy you quote constantly, and he's a quack that puts out stats like the one you originally posted...that cheese if 50% salt. Of course I'll assume you're quoting his totally wrong facts again without any evidence to the contrary.
That said, I don't need anything to dismiss this particular claim besides a 2 minute google search.