RE: The sorry story of salt, and how we got fooled, again!
Sodium was scarce for almost all of cellular evolution. However potassium was more plentyful, as a result of this our cells evolved to exist with high potassium levels but lower sodium levels. Sodium was so scarce in fact that cells evolved pumps to bring it in. However in modern times sodium is plentyful thanks to technology, but our cells still work as though it isn't. So while your advice to use natural salt is good, I would hesitate to "use it with reckless abandon" as too much sodium is still bad. Our cells pump sodium in well even when it's availability is low. They pump even more (too much) in when it's concentration is high.
This is one reason in our world of preprocessed heavily salted foods that people have issues. Societal sodium intake is just way too high.
Use good salt, however still practice moderation. Our biochemistry evolved to seek out salt.
I didn't quite say "reckless" but I take your point.
Yes, I agree that people eating a lot of pre-packaged foods are probably getting enough, or more than enough.
But in the context of real food, I still think we can add salt to taste. When it's natural, and not engineered, if we use excess salt, it will taste nasty. So there is an inbuilt control mechanism on our intake.
I personally try to avoid all unnecessary salt intake, I have actually become accustomed to it and I find most people's salt to taste amount of salt to be way too much. I dunno perhaps I am too much of a proponent of low salt.
You're certainly not wrong, in the end I was just trying to discuss the cellular biochemistry of sodium import. We are really designed to import the sodium and get rid of the potassium. And that fact is derived from the environment life developed in many millions of years ago :D
It's good to be able to discuss the scientific angle (which you always do so well and thoroughly) as well as the more anecdotal. I appreciate you contributing to the information here for everybody to consider and learn from.
One thing that is hard to quantify is biochemical individuality, not just about salt, but about all foods and even activities.
I would encourage people, if they have ill health of any kind, to look at all of their intakes to determine which might be causing the problem. Evaluating in a case by case way, rather then knee jerking. Not that I'm accusing you of that! But many people just believe what they are told.
I usually try to follow what the data indicates, however I am likely in a better position to read the primary articles and know whether the experiments described are actually testing what they claim (poor experimental design is a common thing ... Hopefully not in my papers... But that's for my reviewers to yell at me about!). For a non scientist I can imagine that much of what is reported seems no different from magic. To me it seems that people also find that much of the data conflicts some other data and so they really don't know what to think.
My goal over time is just to keep presenting and talking about the basics over and over again to hopefully allow at least a few people to have a better ability to sift through the magic and pull out the facts being reported. So thank you for your complements, that means I must be doing something right.
Your right that a core tenant of good health is good eating, people should really take time to evaluate what they are eating and what the longterm impact may be. One does not have to fix everything, but trying to make small proactive changes can go a long way to keeping a variety of chronic diseases at bay.
Anyway lovely chatting with you!