First, deer and other ruminants don't need nearly as much salt as humans do. And not all humans need much either. There is a gene that appears to be an adaptation to shore living, that causes some people to excrete salt and sometimes too much salt (and also might confer immunity to cholera, which is spread by water snails). For myself, and my mother, our sodium levels are always chronically low, even though we tend to crave salt. My kids crave salt too. If I don't get enough salt in my diet, I start feeling faint and lack energy.
But there are some people who get high blood pressure when they eat too much salt.
So I think what should happen is: people should listen to their taste buds. Ideally if you have high-enough sodium levels in your blood, your body will tell you that you don't need more! Like your body should tell you about how much food you need to eat.
Also, I have found that since I've learned better how to cook, I need less salt as a seasoning. The trick is learning how to use spices ... most of them are incredibly good for you, having anti-cancer and anti-oxidant effects, besides making food taste awesome. One thing about Stefansson's time: the English were really naive about spices! English food of the time was rather horrid from a culinary perspective.
I think if a person is living mostly off fish though, you wouldn't need extra salt? Seafood is pretty high in sodium. English food at the time was land food, and typically very low in sodium except what was added.
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:50 AM, tamaratornado <tamaratornado@yahoo.com> wrote:
We have debated salt on my paleolithic diet group. There are traditional cultures that use salt and trade for salt, and there are wild animals that go to great lengths to get salt: elephants and deer, I believe. But there are other deer that don't eat salt, and are just as healthy. There are traditional cultures that don't add salt to their food. Some natural foods have an amount of salt in them, like celery.
The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived with the Eskimos, reports that they did not use salt. He explains this is part II here (scroll down):
http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
That's a fascinating account, btw, I suggest to read the whole thing.
Me, I use a small amount of sea salt in my food at home when I feel like it. If you go without salt, or on low salt, your taste buds adjust and you taste more flavors and don't need so much salt. I notice that if I go to a restaurant, that the food tastes very salty to me and makes me thirsty.
There's a variety of healthy salts: sea salt, celtic sea salt, and himilayan pink salt.
I have a hickory smoked sea salt I love.
It's probably a question of balance, too much or too little of salt....?
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