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Comment by jimrandomh | Hacker News Reader

I notice that the instructions for Soylent stopped mentioning salt problem somewhere between v1.3 and v1.5.

How much sodium to eat is very controversial, but if you're eating sodium, you should know that they took the extreme low-sodium position. The current version contains 1640mg of sodium per pouch, which is about half the typical intake. This creates a risk of deficiency, especially when exercising or in hot weather. The symptoms of sodium deficiency are headaches and lethargy; the test for whether those symptoms are caused by sodium deficiency is to eat salt (~1g mixed with food or water) and see if they go away quickly.

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Sodium needs vary by person; some people require a low-sodium diet, some average, and some higher than average.

While I find the current Soylent interesting, I'm also looking forward to a future Soylent 2.0 that's customized to a specific person's nutrient needs.

Surely it's pretty easy to just add in the extra sodium yourself? 1640 does not sound low to me, that sounds healthy for the average person.

Why would this create a risk of deficiency for most people? Excepting exercise - the maximum daily recommended amount is 2,300mg; for people who have problems with sodium (particularly those with high blood pressure), the recommendation is to limit sodium to 1,500mg/day.

The controversy I refer to is over whether the 1500mg-2300mg range is sensible. If you trust the IOM guidelines, that's fine, but my own reading of primary-source research has come up with nothing but null results and my personal experience has been that more is needed.

there is a lot of literature about how much sodium is too much, it's much harder to find minimum values: I personally due to health issues am on an extremely low sodium diet (< 500mg/day, usually around 400mg) and have been for over two years with apparently no ill effects, but then again my wife seems to not do very well if she goes under 1500, I guess we're all different (which would make it nice for soylent to come with separate sodium so that could be adjusted on an individual basis).

> there is a lot of literature about how much sodium is too much

Is there? I remember reading an article a while back saying that all those claims turned out to be based on a handful of flawed studies, and that for healthy people there is no problem with any halfway reasonable amount of salt intake as long as you drink enough.

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