Let’s continue the journey through the meanders of unhealthy eating. We eat too much salt. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but we consume too little potassium, which helps maintain salt balance. In live, unprocessed foods, the sodium-potassium balance exists naturally. That is, if we eat a salad or a fruit, we have both salt and potassium in them, we don’t have to worry about acid-base balance, osmotic pressure and protein anabolism. Nature has put everything you need in vegetables and fruits. But processed foods have too much salt and too little potassium. Thus, the salt accumulates in the body and is no longer eliminated, and from there all the miracles of diseases that grind humanity now begin: high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and others.
As I said about sugar and sweet taste, salt is also addictive. There are people who add salt to their food without tasting it beforehand, it’s like an automatic. We are used to eating very salty, and salt covers all other tastes. When I had covid I had a few days where I could only taste salty or bitter. All I could taste was the salt in the food. One morning I ate a piece of ham and felt as if I had put a spoonful of salt in my mouth. It was terrible. This made me reconsider my relationship with salt. We should consume no more than 3-5 grams of salt daily, i.e. a well-shaken teaspoon. All foods contain salt naturally, both natural and especially processed. In vain the WHO advised the processors to reduce the salt in their products, they can no longer do that because no one would buy them anymore, people are already addicted to salt, plus those products would no longer have any taste. Nature knows what to put in its products, no one can imitate it.
Well, what should we do? As with sugar addiction, weaning occurs gradually. First, stop putting salt on your vegetables. Vegetables taste great, they don’t need enhancers. Then buy less salty commercial nonsense, stop putting salt on your plate before you taste, eat a raw vegetable at every meal for potassium, use aromatic or spicy herbs instead of or with less salt. As in everything in life, there are methods, just be open to it. Food has an infinity of flavors, but most of us only taste sweet and salty. Isn’t that a shame?