Hacker News Reader

Comment by vfc1 | Hacker News Reader

With the advent of refrigeration, we need salt less than ever. The problem is that brands have used it to gain a comercial advantage, to the point where if we eat some processed food and dont add any extra salt, we are already exceeding the daily recommended limit.

The link between salt and hypertension is well known by the general public, but less well know is that salt is a major cause of stomach cancer.

There is just so much salt hidden in everyday food, that we are not even aware of.

Yet, its possible to do a very salty tasting soup just by using carrot juice or celery as the base instead of water, as those vegetables are relatively high in sodium.

You taste it and could swear that the soup was salted, when there is no added salt.

View on HN

Salt to hypertension thesis has been hit with a number of problems recently. As have many other "known" results in dietary and epidemiological studies.

Current research suggests that while salt is bad for people WITH hypertension the causal link between elevated consumption and hypertension isn't what was earlier believed. One study here https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317099.php

I reached a point where I don't know what to believe, everything cures and causes cancer at the same time, every week I'll ran into an article about a new study contradicting some random common knowledge.

I guess the key is to live a balanced life, don't consume anything in excess and don't worry too much. "In medium virtus est"

My favorite guidance is Pollan's, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."[0]

Another piece of guidance I like is this (paraphrased): Eat absolutely anything you want. But make it all yourself. If you want cookies and cake and ice cream, great! Buy flour and sugar and butter and chocolate and milk and cream, and make them yourself.[1]

Now, these don't directly address your point about conflicting research. They give reasonable heuristics that work well, though. Now, clearly you can come up with pathological examples that follow the advice above - any of us could come up with dozens that are reasonable. But being precise and 100% correct is not the point of a heuristic.

[0] https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/

[1] Paraphrased from an interview in Cooked. The 4-part series was produced for Netflix.

With regard to salt, I like the advice “salt to taste”: add salt to your food until it taste good. Salt has many roles in the body; it was simplistic and wrong to blame a oerson’s high blood pressure on salt consumption.

We praise "peer review" without understanding/acknowledging that there are few peers and little review.

The aphorism "science advances one funeral at a time" is saddeningly true.

The more rigorous areas are those with little time lag between input and output, and results that are easily verifiable. Do you die within 2 weeks of taking this drug or are you cured - strong results. Take this pill every day for 40 years to reduce your all factor mortality by 15% - not so much. An imploded sphere of plutonium either gives you a lump of metal or an earth shattering kaboom - no need for a second lab to reproduce.

Areas with high time lag and difficult verification/reproduction are more vulnerable to research and policy entrepreneurialism. Whether it's salt hypertension, red meat and heart disease, the Cornell Brand Lab, or much of sociology errors last for decades because of the high costs of verification and the low rewards.

You'll notice that nearly EVERYTHING that you consume comes with the State of California Cancer warning.

I always thought that refrigeration was the nail in the coffin for demand for salt as a preservative, but the book mentioned in the article points out that it started with canned food. I never appreciated how innovative that approach must have been at the time. Stick the food in a sealed can and then heat it up. Although, apparently Ancient Romans and Chinese had used that technique, but for some reason it lost popularity until its rediscovery in the 19th century.

> The link between salt and hypertension

This idea is not supported by the evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com