Salt dietary guidelines: Why do food manufacturers use so much salt?

Interestingly you cannot meet both potassium and sodium dietary guidelines: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23507224

I'd take any such guideline with a grain of salt :)

A couple of years ago, a doctor brought the ~2300mg of sodium recommendation to my attention. While I had previously been considering foods based on calories, fat, etc., I had never even thought about the sodium level, nor how much I was getting or should be getting.

So I started paying attention. I was amazed at how easily you could fly way past 2300mg while still eating healthy otherwise. I began reducing my sodium intake on purpose, choosing low-salt or no-salt options when available, and cooking with less or no salt. (It's not always easy to find low-salt packaged foods! Some things I just stopped eating altogether, or eat very little of.)

It was initially an exercise in blandness, but now I'm quite used to the flavor, and am disgusted at the idea of eating as much salt as I did 2+ years ago.

Article makes a lot of sense.

I don't think there's any evidence that we should be curtailing our consumption of salt anymore (although I'd be interested in the details if there were still reasons), but the main reason for me to curtail salt intake is because eating too much salt lowers my ability to taste salt, and salt is good.

The recommendation to reduce salt intake is simply wrong People craving salt is the sense of taste working as it should, in a world of salt-deficient people.

The body needs a large amount of salt. But it has to be unprocessed solar cured sea salt. Processed table salt is terrible for you.