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Comment by NoPicklez | Hacker News Reader

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps.

The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy.

It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are bashing sugar and creating fear because alot of people (myself included at times) eat way too much sugar, because its so easy to do, but it does create adverse health effects. That doesn't mean sugar is bad, just that eating copious amounts of highly refined sugar is bad for you.

Try exercising without a healthy blood sugar level due to lack of complex sugars.

Now we have this keto industry where people think twice about eating fruit due to it being high in sugar, FRUIT for god sake.

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>"sugar is essential for the human body"

Sugar is not essential to the diet, the body can make it from fat and protein. Ie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

However, afaik, you cannot live without fat or protein in your diet.

>"Try exercising without a healthy blood sugar level due to lack of complex sugars."

You assume "healthy blood sugar level" must be related to "amount of sugar in diet". Not true, your body can adapt to different diets.

Consuming only fats and proteins stresses the body quite heavily. Carbs are the easiest calorie source to digest, there is almost no digestion required.

Plus one can overload their body's compensatory mechanisms for acid base balance, due to the acidic ketones produced by gluconeogenesis.

Its a terrible idea to do no carbs long term.

This isn't in conflict with what I said but ok. Possibly, what evidence are you basing this on?

The first sentence seems almost sense free. The second one is probably true, the third is complete nonsense, and the fourth is a value judgement.

Indeed.

My body can rearrange the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to make simple sugars from fats and proteins.

Unless the body can do nuclear fusion, one cannot synthesize sodium. Last I checked, we humans (or any animals) cannot.

Yes, humans cannot synthesize sodium but it also doesn't degrade, its only lost due to excretion. Regardless, it is an essential component of the diet, unlike sugar.

Plants (and every other known form of life) also cannot synthesize minerals.

Sugar is not essential for the human body.

There is no necessary carbohydrates, whereas you require some amount of fat and protein to survive. Consider humans surviving in cold area with literally no fruit except in Summer (at some extreme level: human thriving in area with no accessible plants to be directly ingested).

Fruits are not the enemy, but keep in mind their wide (mangos in Northern Europe!), year-long availability (strawberries in February!), along with their nutrition value (high in sugar) is a product of modernity.

It is misleading and completely wrong to infer from "low blood sugar levels make exercise hard" that dietary consumption of refined sugars is essential.

I agree with everything you say, except the second to last paragraph. My endurance increased immensely by switching to keto, due to no longer using glucose as an energy source (instead, ketones).

I do HIIT in a fasted state weekly. Am I at my peak performance in said state? Maybe not, but I'm not competing and get through my workout just fine, so...

For me, endurance exercise is where I really need salt to avoid cramping. The more hours exercising, the more salt/calories I need to ingest. High intensity doesn't hit my body quite the same way.

Just an anecdote, YMMV

Interesting! Did my first two day fasting this weekend and felt awesome the whole time. I broke the fast yesterday evening because I want to hit the gym today.

Do you continue the fast after HIIt or do you eat some protein after? How do you feel after such an intense workout in a fasted state?

Salt really only tastes good when you need salt. It's satiation depends on the body's current levels/needs.

>Salt really only tastes good when you need salt. It's satiation depends on the body's current levels/needs.

So people who scarf down potato chips by the bag are low on salt?

They are eating more than just salt..the fat and carbohydrates in the chips. But yes, people will eat saltier foods more often if they are lacking in salt. There is literally a craving.

"A number of hormonal, central nervous, and behavioral systems are engaged when an animal is truly deficient in sodium, which motivates it to search for sodium salts, avidly consume them based on their salt taste, and thereby restore sodium balance" [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2491403/

>They are eating more than just salt..the fat and carbohydrates in the chips. But yes, people will eat saltier foods more often if they are lacking in salt. There is literally a craving.

Well, yeah, I won't argue with that. I've experienced it myself during intense hangovers. But how do you get from that to "Salt really only tastes good when you need salt"? I love the taste of salt. I would never eat french fries that had no salt on them. Nor would I consider making a margarita without rimming the glass with salt.

What I meant is that cravings for sugar and salt modulate taste covariantly. Which you seem to get. None the less, salt still has am enjoyable taste inherently, before being amplified/minified.

> What I meant is that cravings for sugar and salt modulate taste covariantly. Which you seem to get.

Uh, yeah, I think a five year old would get that. Things that one craves taste quite good when they finally hit one's taste buds.

But this:

> Salt really only tastes good when you need salt.

Logically implies that when a person does not need salt, salt does not taste good to that person.

If a person has high sodium levels, they shouldn't feel attracted to salt. Some people don't listen to their bodies..

>If a person has high sodium levels, they shouldn't feel attracted to salt. Some people don't listen to their bodies.

Do you have a reference that supports any of this? It runs counter to all of my observations.

Anecdotally: this works for me. It is easy to eat without much salt (and sometimes even avoid salty food) when I don't crave it.

I do crave it often though, especially when I exercise more or don't eat much for longer time periods. I also drink a lot of water.

Yes... The evidence suggests that humans self regulate sodium levels.

https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8XRTS.ht...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/we-ea...

>People tend to consume about the same amount of sodium no matter where they live, and this amount hasn’t changed much in decades. Those facts hint at the biological basis of our sodium appetite.... “Over the last five decades, salt content of commercial food in our food [in the United States] has gone up. But if you look at people’s 24-hour urinary sodium excretion, you see that the amounts of salt people consume have been constant,” he says. Irrespective of age, sex or race, between 1957 and 2003 Americans have been eating on average 3.5 grams of salt a day. “This suggests that we are somehow regulating the amount of salt we are eating,” Breslin says.... In one of Leshem’s studies, babies who had low concentrations of sodium in their blood in the first weeks of their lives grew up to be teenagers with a penchant for salt, even salt that is seemingly hidden in processed foods. “Even if you can’t taste the salt, apparently your body does. It’s working on an unconscious level to condition a preference for sodium,” Leshem explains.

> The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy.

No, they don’t. If you don’t have hypertension you can have as much salt in your diet as you want. Northern Chinese food is really salty. They’re fine. Stop moralising.

If you don’t have hypertension add salt as you please.

Given the obesity problems in the US, the low-carb/keto suggestions are effectively the same as the premature optimization/bike shedding issues with coding. If you're eating 1,000 calories too much, it doesn't matter if it's carbs or protein. Get the calories-in-calories-out balance correct, then you can start worrying about the macro nutrition afterwards. If I recall correctly, the sugar toxicity problems occur when you don't burn them.

This is opposite of the productive approach. The starting point should be "what diet can you eat that makes you feel satisfied after the appropriate amount of calories for your body/lifestyle".

The proportion of carbs in the diet seems to have a huge effect on appetite for many people. For them, eating fewer carbs means they are satisfied after fewer calories, so they eat less and lose weight.

If nutrition research was scientific they would have figured this out before a couple authors and random people with blogs did.

Veggies and fruit are carbs. I replaced pasta and white rice with oatmeal, cabbage and apples. All of above are all carbs. Not all carbs are equal. I feel fully satisfied with less calories now. I can eat 4 cups of rice in one sitting without realizing it, but not 4 apples. Saying replace pasta with eggs and bacon is not better than suggesting more veggies and fruits.

Regarding the approach, I found it easiest to know my goal weight has a maintenance calories of 2,100 calories - an objective, hard number. Hit that, then adjust diet for the very subjective goal of being feeling satisfied after that. I can't imagine an effective public health policy based on subjective "do you feel full?"

1) You seem to think you are disagreeing with me, but I never said everyone was the same. I said the point is to find a diet where you feel satisfied without consuming too many calories. Some people might love sugar too much and need to cut down on something else (eg fat) instead, or they simply need to exercise more via getting a different job, etc.

2) Pretty sure pasta and white rice will have a higher density of carbs than eg cabbage and apples. From a random site (feel free to find a better source) in grams of carbs per cup of food:

  oatmeal = 29.3 g
  cabbage = 5.2 g
  apples  = 17.3 g
  rice    = 44.5 g 
  pasta   = 42.8 g

3) "I can't imaging an effective public health policy based on subjective "do you feel full?". I don't see what the problem would be, but whatever. These nutritional public health policies have all been awful, no one should be listening to them anyway.

Refs:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/breakfast-cereals/1600/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/...

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