Are The "5 Deadly Whites" Coming To Take You Away? (Part II: Salt)

Most people have no idea how dangerous salt is to their health, fitness, and over well-being. Even if they do, most people still eat way too much of it throughout their lifetimes.

White table salt is actually the chemical compound, sodium chloride, not to be confused with the natural sodium found in natural foods. It is the white table salt that is so very detrimental to health, fitness, and over well-being.

So what is so bad about eating salt? With no exaggeration, many experts think that salt just happens to be one of the most toxic and dangerous foods that we eat. And most of us don’t just eat a little of it; we eat a lot of it. It is hidden in many of our foods. In fact, many of us eat up to 4000 and more milligrams of salt every day.

Actually we need NO sodium chloride in our diets at all and only 300 milligrams of natural sodium found in fresh foods. There is a hefty price for eating an excess of salt.

Interestingly enough, most of the dietary salt we take in does not come from the salt shaker as most of us believe. In other words, it is not enough to just stay away from the salt shaker to lower the salt intake.

About 65% to 85% of the salt we eat comes in the form of processed foods, like canned foods, packaged foods, and, believe it or not, bread. In fact, bread is probably one of the biggest bad guys when it comes to salt. If you don’t believe it, just read the labels. You will discover for yourself how much salt you are eating and probably don’t even know it.

Remember, when you really start investigating how much salt you are getting in the foods you are eating, ideally you want exactly NO salt in the form of sodium chloride in your diet—and only 300 milligrams of sodium that comes naturally in foods.

How do we know that salt is not good for us?

Think about how your body reacts to eating salt. As soon as you eat salt, you get thirsty. Why is that do you suppose? You can’t eat salted popcorn or chips without getting thirsty. In fact, bread, meat and dairy products are so full of salt that you can’t eat them without getting thirsty either, although that thirst may not be quite as obvious.

Salt triggers your thirst instinct so that you will drink water. Water is the body’s way of diluting this toxic substance as quickly as possible to minimize salt’s harmful effects on your body.

First your body dilutes the irritating salt crystals with fluids. Then your body wisely shunts the diluted irritants away from vital organs in your body, like your heart and lungs, and stores the diluted salt in, and I know this will make sense to you, your feet, ankles, legs, hands, and even tissues around your eyes.

That’s why your eyes, hands, feet, ankles, and legs may be puffy when you get up in the morning, especially after feasting on foods high in salt the day before. Your body does whatever it can do to keep excess fluids away from your heart and lungs. It’s so amazing how smart the body is. It always tries to protect us in spite of our foolish ways.

Here’s an interesting tidbit for you, my friends. One ounce of salt holds 3 quarts or 6 pounds of excess water in your body. That means for every extra one ounce of salt you take into your body, your body retains six pounds of water. Shoot—sounds to me like if you just eliminate sodium chloride from your diet, just that one little change, you would lose a lot of weight and maintain your ideal weight.

What else is bad about salt?

It is a well-known fact that salt causes the loss of elasticity and the constriction of blood vessels. Constricted blood vessels cause high blood pressure because your heart has to work extra hard to get all your blood pumped through those stiff and constricted blood vessels.

That is more wear and tear on your heart, folks.

Furthermore, just because your blood pressure appears to be under control doesn’t mean that salt is not silently hurting you, or that you will not get high blood pressure later when the damage is done and harder to reverse.

Because salt damages blood vessels, it goes without saying that salt contributes to heart disease and strokes.

Salt is thought to also cause kidney stones, asthma, and stomach cancer.

Salt contributes greatly to weight gain and obesity.

And because salt triggers the leaching of calcium from the bones, salt is a contributor to osteoporosis, just like coffee, white flour, white sugar, pop, and meat of all kinds.

Remembering that you only need approximately 300 milligrams of natural sodium a day and never sodium chloride, how much sodium are you getting from the food that you eat everyday? Allow me to share with you the sodium content of some of our common foods.

One cheeseburger has 1950 mgs of salt.
Scrambled eggs and sausage has 1411 mgs of salt.
One fish and cheese sandwich has 1035 mgs of salt.
One hot dog has 880 mgs of salt.
¼ of a medium pizza has 1100 mgs of salt
½ cup of canned vegetables has 265 to 485 mgs of salt.
6 ounces of canned vegetable juice has 450 to 555 mgs of salt.
¼ cup of spaghetti sauce has 327 to 831 mgs of salt.
One frozen dinner has 852-1650 mgs of salt.
1 pickle has 515 to 645 mgs of salt.
One 3-oz. can of tuna has 180-485 mgs of salt.
One can of soup has 675-1547 mgs of salt.
2 oz. of sliced ham has 624 to 1578 mgs of salt.
1 cup of cereal has 205 to 370 mgs of salt.
2 slices of bread have anywhere from 190 to 1090 mgs of salt.

There is no doubt that salt is not good for you, and many of the foods you eat every day are loaded with salt.

If you commit to changing one thing in your diet and food life, eliminate the sodium chloride. If you do, your rewards will be plentiful and may include weight loss, as well as health and fitness gain.

Part I: White Flour and White Rice
Part III: White Sugar
Part IV: "White" Processed Oils

Dr. Leslie Van Romer is a motivational health speaker, writer and lifestyle coach. Visit Dr. Leslie at Http://DrLeslieVanRomer.com for practical direction, hope and inspiration.