Salty diet 'causes 1.6 million deaths worldwide each year'

Consuming too much salt leads to more than 1.6 million heart disease-related deaths around the world each year, research suggests.

Lead scientist Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, from Tufts University in the US, said: ''High sodium intake is known to increase blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases including heart disease and stroke.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SALT

Would you use sodium, a caustic alkali, to season your food? Or chlorine, a poisonous gas? "Ridiculous questions," you say. "Nobody would be foolhardy enough to do that." Of course not. But the shocking truth is that most people do so... because they don't know that these powerful chemicals constitute the inorganic crystaline compound—salt.
For centuries, the expression "salt of the earth" has been used as a catch-all phrase to designate something good and essential. Nothing could be more erroneous. For that harmless product that you shake into your food every day may actually bury you. Consider these startling facts:

1. SALT IS NOT A FOOD! There is no more justification for its culinary use than there is for potassium chloride, calcium chloride, barium chloride, or any other harmful chemical to season food.

2. Salt cannot be digested, assimilated, or utilized by the body. Salt has no nutritional value! SALT HAS NO VITAMINS! NO ORGANIC MINERALS! NO NUTRIENTS OF ANY KIND! Instead, it is positively harmful and may bring on troubles in the kidneys, bladder, heart, arteries, veins, and blood vessels. Salt may waterlog the tissues, causing a dropsical condition.

3. Salt may act as a heart poison. It also increases the irritability of the nervous system.

4. Salt acts to rob calcium from the body and attacks the mucous lining throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract. SALT IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO LIFE. It is frequently claimed that salt is essential for the support of life.
However, there is no information available to substantiate this viewpoint. The truth is that entire races (primitive peoples) use absolutely no salt today and have not used it throughout their entire history. If salt were essential to life, these races would have become extinct long ago. The fact that they are not only alive but have far better health than other races, would seem to indicate that the supposed "necessity" of salt is a commercially-inspired invention or merely the product of the imagination.

WHAT SALT DOES TO YOUR STOMACH
An important objection to salt is the fact that it interferes with the normal digestion of food. Pepsin, an enzyme found in the hydrochloric acid of the stomach, is essential for the digestion of proteins. When salt is used, only 50% as much pepsin is secreted as would otherwise be the case. Obviously, under such conditions, digestion of protein foods is incomplete or too slow. The result is excessive putrefaction of protein and, in some instances, gas and digestive distress.

THE SALT HABIT IS A DEADLY HABIT—QUIT IT!
People undoubtedly would not add inorganic salt to their food if they were never taught to do so in the first place. The taste for salt is an acquired one. When salt is eliminated from the diet for a short time, the craving for it ceases. It is only during the first few weeks after table salt is discontinued that it is really missed... after that, abstinence is of little difficulty. In fact, many of my health students... who have broken the deadly salt habit... write me that NOW they cannot stand salted foods! When someone serves them salted food, it gives them an abnormal thirst for liquids.

Q. Just how harmful is table salt?
A. The Egyptians used salt for embalming. Let's take the hint! This year Americans will consume five hundred million pounds of salt. That's a lot of embalming

Q. Would it not be all right to put a little salt on one's food if it seemed to taste "flat" otherwise?
A. Table salt, and all other salts except those found in their organic stages in fruits and vegetables, are inorganic substances which cannot be assimilated by the body and must be discarded by the bloodstream at the earliest opportunity.

Usually the salt is deposited in the joints, particularly the knees, elbows, ankles, wrists, and the like, resulting later in arthritis and rheumatism. It makes no difference whether you have gotten your salt in the form of the table variety, or as saleratus (bichloride of soda) in hot biscuits, or Epsom salts prescribed for internal use in cases of constipation; all are productive of the same injurious results. What is the first symptom of salt deposits in the joints? Do they crack when you do a knee bend? If so, your joints are commencing to become dry due to the salt deposits having absorbed all the synovial fluid which acts as a lubricant in those regions. Salt has a tremendous attraction for water and all other liquids. No wonder doctors prescribe innumerable glasses of water daily so that their patients may to some extent satisfy the incessant craving for liquid caused by the salt they are eating. Remember that salt may dissolve in water and in the saliva of the mouth, but it will recrystallize within a very short time and under no circumstances will it be absorbed into the bodily structure. It will collect wherever there is room for it to be deposited.

How to reduce excess salt
If there is excess salt in your Stew,Soup... just peel irish potatoe and put it inside it will absorb all the excess salt....