Are you taking too much salt?

And does excessive salt intake cause really high blood pressure? Maybe not. Because there are reasons to believe that the real culprit is unnatural refined salt and that natural sea salt will not cause this problem.

Click here to read a discussion on whether too much salt really causes high blood pressure.

The proper use of salt is also important. Salt should be cooked together with food and not sprinkled on top of food after it has been cooked. So go easy on those potato chips and salted nuts, including those that have been salted with natural sea salt.

If you have read some of the articles in website, especially about the benefits of sea salt, you will know by now that salt is basically not harmful but healthy. It is necessary for life.

Sure. Too much salt will be harmful. At the same time, we should understand that too little salt is equally harmful. So don't make the mistake of going overboard and avoiding salt altogether. After a while. you will start to become weak and prone to bacteria and virus attack.

With salt, as with anything else, the key is balance. You need the right amount. But what is the right amount?

Expert recommendations

In any case, the most popular figure right now is about 2.3 grams for adults, with an advice that certain high risk groups should take less salt than that.

The figure itself is meaningless. How would you know if you are taking more, or less, than that amount? Unless you measure and weigh all your food, and religiously read all food labels to discover the salt content? However, the advice that certain people should take less salt is very sensible - because different people have diferent needs.

Personal needs

So before we discuss what is too much salt, let's take a look at who should reduce - and who should increase - their salt intake.

Macrobiotic view of too much salt

Another "salt shock" for me came when I invited macrobiotic teacher Herman Aihara to give classes in Singapore during the 1990s. Herman Aihara had packed some rice balls for his trip and he did not finish them. So he shared them with me and a few other macrobiotic friends upon his arrival.

Rice balls are usually filled with something salty to preserve them from the inside, and wrapped in nori seaweed, again to preserve them from the outside. The rice ball that Herman Aihara shared was filled with shiitake mushroom cooked in shoyu. Oooooo! I had never tasted anything so incredibly salty before.

In the macrobiotic understanding, salt is yang, meaning it has a strong contracting energy. You can see this effect in salted meat, fish, or vegetables. They contract and become smaller, harder and more concentrated.

Likewise, a person who takes plenty of salt would exhibit contracted qualities, eg, a body that is shrivelled up and stiff, or a personality that is overly narrow-minded, serious and stubborn. If these descriptions fit you, you would do well to reduce your salt intake also.

Herman Airhara, despite his very salty diet, did not quite show these traits. He did have another, though - a head of white hair. The macrobiotic explanation is that the strong contracting energy of salt causes contraction at the hair follicles. As a result, the hair is deprived of nourishment and so turns white. Overall, Herman Aihara was healthy though, and lived into his 80s.

Avoiding too much salt

OK, assuming you fall into the group that needs to avoid too much salt. How do you do this? As mentioned earlier, it is not practical to measure and weigh all your food in order to find out how much salt you are taking. Even if you cook your own meals, it is not practical to measure the amount of salt either.

My suggestion is, firstly, to be more mindful of your eating habits. Do you, for example...

• Take a lot of processed, canned and packaged foods? If so, stop. Or at least reduce them to a minumum. Here, we are not just talking about blatantly salty foods like salted potato chips, but ALL processed foods. Canned vegetables, for example, can contain up to several hundred times more salt compared with fresh vegetables.
  
  
• Sprinkle salt onto your food before tasting it? And do you sprinkle as a matter of habit, without really knowing how much you have sprinkled? Again, this is too much salt. And it is not a good idea to sprinkle salt onto food in the first place. Salt should be cooked together with food.
  
  Asians, instead of sprinkling food, might dip it in soy sauce. Again, watch how you do this. Do you dip a small corner of your food? Or a fairly large area? Or all over? Many times I have observed people, with a piece of food held between chopsticks, dip it round and round until the entire piece is covered with soy sauce.

Be mindful of how you add salt when cooking as well. More than once, I have seen cookery instruction videos on YouTube where the cook says "Add a pinch of salt" but the video shows the person sprinkling generously, taking a second or two to spread the salt all over. A "pinch of salt" should leave your hands in a fraction of a second, not take one or two seconds to spread around.

Or, if you measure 1/4, or 1/2 or one teaspoon of salt, is it a heaped teaspoonful or a level teaspoonful? Be mindful of such habits.

Light salty taste

In general, your food should have a light salty taste, not a strong salty taste.

But this is tricky. If you are used to eating too much salt, a "light" salty taste to you could still mean far too much salt. The thing to do, then, is to re-train your tastebuds. Avoid salt completely for about two weeks. Go "cold turkey". if you think this is too much of a torture, well, this is what you will be forced to do if you ever land in a hospital with a heart attrack.

During these two weeks, your food will taste horribly bland, of course. But after about two weeks, your tastebuds will become more sensitive. And you will find that even bland foods will start to have flavour.

This same "cold turkey" treatment works also for weaning yourself off sugar, or chilli or any other strong taste. Try it, whether your problem is too much salt, too much sugar or something else. It is a small, temporary sacrifice. But you will be rewarded with more sensitive tastebuds. You will discover that natural foods have far more complex tastes than merely salty, sweet or whatever.

Your food will become more delicious - without having to add too much salt.

And remember! Always use natural sea salt and use it correctly, cooked with food rather than sprinkled over food. If you do this, you won't have to worry too much about taking too much salt.