OBESITY AND THE SALT CONNECTION - Mensa article by Margaret Wilde

Obesity and the Salt Connection

What follows is a slightly modified version of an article I wrote for the British monthly glossy magazine of Mensa, the high IQ society, of which I am a member. It was published in the December 2004 issue. Four months later, the April 2005 issue contained a letter from Joyce Barnard, who has given permission for her name to be used here. She wrote that by following the advice I had given her a few years earlier - i.e. that to lower her high blood pressure and lose weight she simply needed to eat less sodium - she had lost 5 stones in weight (70 pounds) in a year! - All she did was stop sprinkling salt onto her meals and use LoSalt instead of ordinary salt when cooking.

Many years ago I gained a great deal of weight because of taking HRT prescribed by my GPs, mainly on the advice of an endocrinologist. - I did not realise at the time that the weight gain was because of the medication.

I became desperately ill and exhausted and had very high blood pressure for which I took Atenolol, a beta-blocker. I was so fat I could barely walk. Yet I was not overeating. My feet, hands and breasts were exquisitely painful and very red and swollen. I was unable to use my hands for many tasks. I needed a larger size in shoes. My face and neck became beetroot red and very swollen. I developed acne and eczema. I suffered from breathlessness.

Having never sprinkled salt on my food in my life, and never used it in cooking, in 1997 I became aware that there was a lot of salt in bread and cheese and breakfast cereals. Because of the connection between hypertension and salt intake I altered my eating to reduce, and eventually to exclude, all avoidable sodium. This lowered my blood pressure and I no longer needed to take Atenolol.

More spectacularly, and very unexpectedly to me, eating less salt reduced my weight by 51 pounds! - This was nothing to do with calories, fat or sugar. - The weight I lost was clearly water, which I worked out was held in my body by the salt - held in my veins, which had become massively distended and painful since I had embarked on the HRT.

I worked out that it was the oestrogen that had caused the sodium and water retention and this was confirmed when I looked in the British National Formulary for the side-effects of oestrogen. I then realised that oestrogen was a steroid, though it is not normally thought of in that category, and that the sodium and water retention came about because certain steroids and certain other prescribed drugs relax/weaken the walls of the blood vessels so that they take in excess salt and the water which accompanies it. I realised that I was a 'steroid victim'.

For many years I have been providing a free telephone helpline for people in pain in my area and for the last five years have been advising all callers to reduce their salt intake, particularly when they were obese. Their weight loss, too, has been dramatic and swift. One Mensa member whom I helped lost about a stone in a month just by eating less salt. Her dog, too, lost weight when she stopped salting his food!

I firmly believe that the massive rise in the incidence of obesity, especially child obesity, is due to the prevalence of salt in modern diets, mainly from manufactured foods, and that calorie counting and advice about reducing fat and sugar intake and increasing exercise are counter-productive.

But salt causes obesity only in vulnerable people, i.e.

People whose veins are weak because of immaturity (babies, children),

People whose veins are weak because of steroids or HRT or amitriptyline or certain other prescribed drugs, too readily prescribed, often in very high dose,

People whose natural oestrogen levels are higher than normal (e.g. pregnant women).

People whose blood vessel walls have been weakened by 'slimming' – i.e. eating insufficient food.

Inactivity does not cause obesity. Obesity causes inactivity.
In 2001 I wrote to MPs, to medical people, to journalists, to nutritionists and others, explaining that salt sensitivity is what causes obesity, and urging that the facts be made known, particularly to steroid victims. The powerful and influential people to whom I wrote have taken no action to give publicity to the life-saving message. The public is not being told the truth about weight gain and weight loss. The best, the healthiest, the safest way to lose weight is to concentrate on eating less salt (and more potassium).

An Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Professor Sir Richard Doll, wrote back to me in August 2001 that I was right about steroids causing weight gain because of salt and water retention and that weight can be lost by eating less salt or by taking diuretics. Sadly he seems to be the only medic who knows this! - A book on salt, written by experts on hypertension and brought out in a blaze of publicity a few years ago makes no mention of steroid victims and specifically states, among other errors, that HRT does not cause a salt problem.

A person who gains weight has a higher calorie requirement. There are two reasons for this. Having to carry a greater mass around and service a more massive body uses more calories. And having a bigger surface area means greater heat loss, since heat lost is proportional to surface area. - A greater calorie requirement results in greater appetite/hunger, so, really, overweight people need to eat more than people of normal weight. If the overweight eat insufficient calories (ie if they 'diet') they may lose weight, but it is at the cost of being hungry. There has never been the slightest evidence that the practice of fewer calories in and more calories out by way of exercise reduces obesity! - It is often confidently stated that fat will be lost by doing this. - Sadly, what is more often lost is lean tissue, usually an irreversible adverse effect.

The result of the misunderstanding of the cause of obesity is the well-known fact that over 95% of dieters actually gain weight in the long term! - They cannot be expected to go hungry all the time. - Nor would staying hungry all the time benefit them. - With insufficient calories for the body's needs, the body feeds on itself. - The skin becomes thinner; the bones become less dense; there is some hair loss, etc.

Contrast this with the right way to lose weight - by eating less sodium. - Eating less sodium releases some of the excess water held in the blood stream. This lowers the blood pressure and, significantly, lowers the weight. - Weighing less results in a lower calorie requirement so very gradually less food is eaten and this becomes a virtuous circle because less food eaten results in lower sodium intake.

In societies in which no salt is eaten (what some might describe as undeveloped or uncivilised societies) there is no obesity and no hypertension.

The cavemen and women who were our ancestors lived for millennia without added salt. Our bodies evolved on a low sodium and high potassium intake. The modern diet has reversed this to high sodium and low potassium. The intake of salt has massively increased in recent years - as has the incidence of obesity.

I submit that the universal 'slimming' advice - to eat fewer calories/less fat/sugar - is a major cause of obesity. - All that is normally necessary to lose weight is to eat less salt/sodium. This is a drug-free, cost-free course of action. There are no hunger pangs and no adverse side-effects. It requires no visits to the doctor or to the gym and it WILL work.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! -Try it! My website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ provides more details and advice. (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Margaret Wilde

Anyone is welcome to copy this article in whole or in part, provided only that it is always attributed to me, Margaret Wilde, that the information is provided free, and that my web-site address http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ is always included.

If you wish to get in touch with me, you can email me from my website.

You've not got a cold or any similar infection but you're troubled by frequent sneezing/mucus problems like post-nasal drip or a runny nose?

So - you've not got a cold or any similar infection but you're troubled by frequent sneezing/mucus problems like post-nasal drip or a runny nose? - Well these problems can be caused by sensitivity to salt (which can have resulted from taking prescribed meds), and if that is the case you may like to try cutting down on salt and salty food. The problems can also be caused by eating sugary food, so you could try eating less of that. Whether your problems are salty or sugary, cutting down on processed foods is likely to improve matters. And you will feel so much better!

Why is adding salt to food more harmful than in former years?

Adding salt to food is more harmful than years ago because in our developed world, a greater proportion of people are now sensitive to salt than used to be the case. There is both a higher incidence of salt sensitivity and the salt sensitivity itself tends to be more severe. - One of the factors contributing to salt sensitivity is the fact that these days, in general, most children- even toddlers -eat a diet that is too high in salt. Salt is especially bad for children. High salt intake, such as from salty snacks like crisps and salted nuts and junk like Cheesestrings, is a major cause of child obesity. - See Children and Salt. And a taste for salt acquired in childhood is not very easy to 'unacquire'. So the habit of eating over-salted food literally feeds a growing number of related health problems including high blood pressure, obesity, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, depression, dementia and so many more.

 

But at least as important a causative factor in salt sensitivity as high salt intake in childhood is the ever-growing ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical drugs are being prescribed more and more in the UK (and even more still in United States) and other industrialised countries. Most of the prescriptions are for drugs that cause sodium and water/fluid retention and salt sensitivity. I don't mean that they are prescribed with the intention of causing sodium and water retention, but problems with salt are the most common undesirable side-effects of the most frequently prescribed rugs. These include antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, steroids, birth control medications and many more.

 

When you couple the over-prescribing of these dangerous salt-sensitising drugs with the highly-salted processed food that is the norm for a majority of consumers these days, it is assuredly a recipe for disaster both on a personal scale and in the wider social context. - I suggest that you try to avoid prescription drugs as far as you safely can and cut down on salt and salty food as much as you reasonably can. You'll lose some excess weight and improve your health and you'll feel sooo much better!

If your medication gives you a dry mouth or makes you thirsty

If your medication gives you a dry mouth or makes you thirsty, then it may be causing fluid retention, and fluid retention results in weight gain and sensitivity to salt (and many other unpleasant and undesirable side-effects). If you want to reduce the weight gain then the options are: reducing the dosage, gradually weaning yourself off the drug, changing the medication to another, and/or seriously cutting down on salt and salty food. The most commonly prescribed drugs that tend to have this effect are anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline.

Fancy a Free, Safe Face Lift?

Fancy a Free, Safe Face Lift? - If your face seems to be sagging, with heavy, hanging folds of flesh, don't curse gravity and start to think about surgery to stretch and lift the skin and cut off excess. After all, lots of things can go wrong with surgery and it causes pain and costs a lot of money.

I invite you to consider this instead. - The heaviness of the hanging folds of skin on your face is principally because of excess fluid retention. This excess fluid is in the blood vessels - the veins or the tiny capillaries that are largely invisible except for some reddening of the skin. The excess fluid is excess water held there by some sodium retention/salt sensitivity.

If you seriously cut down on salt and salty food this will reduce the amount of excess water held in your blood vessels. (It just gets excreted in the urine.) So there will be less weight pulling your skin down. - An easy, completely safe face lift! - You will look younger and fitter, and you will feel so much better! - And as well as the 'face lift', you will have lost some of the excess fluid elsewhere on your body too, and so you will have lost some excess/surplus weight. - What's not to like!? - Lose excess weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it!

Meniere's Disease? Vertigo? Tinnitus? Feeling of pressure in the ear due to fluid build-up? You can reduce these problems by cutting down on salt.

Meniere's Disease? Vertigo (a form of dizziness where your surroundings appear to spin)? Tinnitus (an abnormal ringing noise inside the ear)? Feeling of pressure or fulness in the ear due to fluid build-up? Fluctuating hearing loss? These health problems are all caused or exacerbated by fluid retention, and fluid retention can easily be reduced by seriously cutting down on salt and salty food. So here's what to do:

Obviously try to give up sprinkling salt on your food. But also, as far as you can, eat fresh food you cook yourself, instead of processed foods, ready meals and takeaways, because these convenience foods are usually very high in salt. See Foods High and Low in Salt/Sodium. Other health benefits you will experience from eating less salt are that you will lose some excess weight, reduce high blood pressure, have more energy, and feel much better. You will also reduce your risk of stroke, diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart attack, most cancers, dementia and many other degenerative illnesses and conditions that are also related to fluid retention and salt sensitivity.

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously?

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously? I'll tell you about some of my own experiences of this.

As someone who gets migraines sometimes, I did what is sensibly advised: I thought about the food I had eaten before getting the migraines in case any particular foods were triggering the attacks. I found that if I ate more than just a few slices of cucumber that usually brought on a migraine, and I also found that another trigger was if I went more than about 5 waking hours without food at all. Non-food triggers for me turned out to be rapidly flashing lights in general or the bright, low-on-the-horizon winter sunshine. So I do what you too, no doubt, would do if you had those same messages from your body, namely, I avoid those triggers if I possibly can.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky about some other messages from my body. When I experienced a lot of health problems starting very roughly at the same time as each other and all getting worse pretty fast, it was rather a long time before I was able confidently and correctly to attribute all of them to the prescribed medication I was taking, and this was, I am sure, partly because I became so desperately tired and so very ill, but mainly because my GP and other health professionals I encountered so firmly assured me that I was wrong - absolutely wrong - and that I should continue with the medication.

Some of these body messages were weight gain and getting fatter, face becoming red and puffy, breasts becoming swollen and extremely painful, with visible veins, aching, swollen reddening agonisingly painful hands and feet, painful, distended veins in the legs that made bending the knees a particularly difficult and painful problem, excruciating headaches that no painkillers could extinguish, desperately painful genital area, increasing fatigue, tiredness and breathlessness, hair loss, and many more. I later discovered that all of these signs and symptoms had resulted from the prescription drugs I was taking - because these drugs had weakened my blood vessels and made me sensitive to salt/sodium. - Because of the web of lies, evasions, deliberate ambiguities, prejudiced viewpoints, false beliefs, ignorance and cover-ups of the health professionals to whom I turned or was directed, my proper understanding of what had been done to me was delayed by many anguished years. See story so far and my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

If you are getting a cluster of body messages that may or may not appear to be connected except that they all have followed some time after starting to take prescribed medication, I urge you to give thought to whether the drug/s could be the cause of the symptoms you are experiencing. Check stuff up for yourself: your doctors may be as uninformed and unhelpful as mine were. Here's some drug information you may find helpful: HRT and Steroids, etc and Amitriptyline and Other Antidepressants.

Asthma sufferers benefit if they cut down on salt and salty food

I met an asthma sufferer today who didn't know that cutting down on salt/sodium is helpful for people with asthma, so I thought I'd draw attention to this again.

A crucial dietary measure that reduces the incidence and severity of childhood asthma is to avoid feeding children salty meals and snacks. - See this article, where you will read, "According to a new study published in the American Dietetic Association, high-salt foods and snacks are linked to lung changes that trigger asthma symptoms.," and that researchers in Greece found, using questionnaires, "Kids who ate high-salt foods more than three times a week saw their risk of asthma symptoms go up almost five times."

We read in this Telegraph report of research in Rome, Italy, led by Dr Giuseppe Corbo. "The study of 20,000 six and seven-year-olds, published in the medical journal Epidemiology, confirmed a strong link with asthma and obesity, but found that salt was the biggest risk. Those with the highest intake were two and a half times more likely to develop asthma." (My emphasis)

If an asthma sufferer uses or has ever used a steroid inhaler it is even more helpful to reduce salt intake. This is because prescribed steroids can, and usually do, cause salt sensitivity/sodium retention/water weight. - See Prescribed Steroids. And for information about the salt content of foods, see Sodium in Foods.

This Patient.co.uk webpage contains excellent comprehensive information about Inhalers for Asthma. Patient.co.uk is free from any commercial conflicts of interest.

Is your beer belly really a SALT belly?

So you drink quite a bit of beer and you've also got a fat gut and you guess that it's a 'beer belly'? You may well be right. - But here is some information you may not know about, that I've cut and pasted from this webpage:

Sodium retention can lead to a further problem called ascites, an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the abdomen, which partly accounts for the protruding abdomen of steroid victims. The good news is that when salt/sodium intake is lowered, the ascites will be reduced along with the fluid retention in the blood vessels. Cutting down on alcohol also reduces the fluid in the abdomen.

You may well conclude from that, and I would agree with you if you did so conclude, that it is really more the fault of sodium retention/salt sensitivity/fluid retention that you are the possessor of that 'beer belly', even though you are probably not a steroid victim. - Whether you cut down on salt or cut down on alcohol, cutting down on either will reduce that fat abdomen, and I suspect that intentionally cutting down on salt will have a more noticeable effect than intentionally cutting down on alcohol, because when you reduce salt intake, one of the benefits is that your thirst is reduced, and so without much effort you may find yourself drinking less beer. - Two birds with one stone! - Well done!

Lose weight by eating less salt! -Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Symptoms of salt sensitivity include:

Symptoms of salt sensitivity include high blood pressure, being overweight/obese, red face, especially after a salty meal, excessive thirst after a salty meal, distended veins, distended abdomen, swollen, aching feet, breathing problems, tiredness, feeling bloated, and many more.

The simple, safe, natural, drug-free way to reduce all of these symptoms is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food. The lower you can get your intake of added salt the better for your health and comfort. In the main this means avoiding processed, readymade meals as these are usually highly salted. You need to buy fresh food and cook it yourself without adding salt or at any rate adding very little salt. You can find lots of information about foods with high and low salt/sodium content on this webpage, along with further suggestions as to how to lower your salt intake. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Get rid of Water Weight by becoming a Salt Shunner!

Yes, that's right: shun the salt! If you are carrying a lot of excess water in your body - feeling heavy, fat, bloated, clumsy and uncomfortable because of fluid retention, you can reduce this problem dramatically by avoiding salt and salty food. You are sensitive to salt/sodium. - It's the sodium that is holding the extra water in your body.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Are you distressed about your Red Nose?

You wish your nose was less red and swollen? You wonder why it has become bigger and redder? - Well, a very likely reason for it is that you have become sensitive to salt and so the blood vessels in your nose, along with your other blood vessels, have become swollen because of extra salt and water in your blood stream. You may have already noticed that your face gets redder after you have eaten a salty meal.

The good news is that if you cut down on salt/sodium all of this swelling will be reduced, and your nose, along with the rest of your body, will look less red and swollen. (If you happen to drink a lot of alcohol, it would also help if you reduce alcohol intake, but you doubtless already know that.)
See Sodium in foods and Groups Vulnerable to Salt.

Psoriasis? Some members of the Psoriasis Help Organisation have found reducing salt intake has greatly reduced their problems with Psoriasis

Some members of the Psoriasis Help Organisation have found reducing salt intake has greatly reduced their problems with psoriasis. See Psoriasis Help Organisation forum page about Salt Sensitivity. In fact, cutting down on salt intake improves health in many ways, particularly in lowering high blood pressure and reducing obesity and risk of stroke, heart attack, heart disease, most cancers, breathing problems and type 2 diabetes. Why not try cutting down on salt and salty food for yourself? - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better...(o:

PMT Problem? Here's what to do:

To reduce or completely put an end to PMT/PMS/Pre-Menstrual Tension you 'just' need to avoid salt and salty food, because this will cause your body to excrete the excess fluid/water weight that is causing the PMT. Fluid Retention caused by Salt Sensitivity is another way of expressing it. - Read about how to reduce PMT by eating less salt. - I say 'just' eat less salt/sodium, because this is by no means as simple as it sounds, in this modern world in which most of the food on sale in supermarkets is laden with very high concentrations of salt added by the food manufacturers. - Instead of relying on processed food and takeaways, you will need to buy fresh raw food and cook it yourself with little or no added salt. But the great improvement in your health and well-being that this will bring about will prove well worth the effort. - Go on! - Try it and see for yourself!

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day?

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day? - If you have, then you are, perhaps, puzzled at how that could be possible. Here is the answer to the puzzle:

The weight you have gained is water weight, also known as fluid retention, sodium retention or salt sensitivity. It is often caused by pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors. See anti-depressants and other drugs and HRT, Steroids and other drugs. It can also be caused by pregnancy.

You can read on my website about the vulnerable groups that can gain (and lose) weight very rapidly. They include children.

You can lose water weight fast, easily and safely. You can also safely lose excess fat.

Ambulance bosses are spending big money buying bariatric ambulances and equipment to accommodate bigger patients

Ambulance bosses are spending big money buying bariatric ambulances and equipment to accommodate bigger patients, as reported by BBC News. Clearly this is necessary. Ambulance bosses are not in a position to correct the misinformation and professional negligence that destroy so many people's health and happiness. On the BBC webpage carrying the report, there is a short video about Eileen Forde's painful and humiliating experience travelling in a standard ambulance when she weighed 34 stone (476 pounds). If you put that lady's name into your search engine I'm sure you will find, as I did, many vituperative, insulting personal comments about Ms Forde, though I think you'd have a long search to find any of these bullies with the courage to comment using their real name. Mostly Eileen is accused and found 'guilty' of being greedy and eating too much - guilty, Dear Reader, with neither evidence nor proof to support the unjust verdict.

I feel great sympathy for anyone like Eileen, subjected to the jeers of fools - and indeed I am brought close to tears sometimes, like today, at such examples of cruelty and unmerited criticism. Instead of blaming morbidly obese people for eating too many 'pies' and the like, the bullies would be nearer the truth if they blamed the pharmaceutical drugs that are a major cause of morbid obesity. You can read about some of these drugs here and here. The bullies would also be nearer the mark if they heaped blame on the highly-paid doctors who prescribed the drugs despite being so ill-informed about their side-effects that they didn't know they would result in obesity because of weakened blood vessels and massive fluid retention. And they didn't know that these side-effects could be avoided by stressing to their patients/victims the need to avoid added salt/sodium and salty food while taking the potentially harmful medication.

If you're going to hurl abuse, choose the right targets: ill-informed healthcare professionals, uncaring drug manufacturers, food scientists who cram salt and sugar and other harmful additives into the junk 'food' that weighs down the shelves of the supermarkets and weighs down the bodies of their customers.

Eat less salt and lower your risk of high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, kidney disease and many more health problems

Reduce your salt consumption and lower your risk of high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, kidney disease and many more health problems.

"The American Heart Association today issued a call to action for the public, health professionals, the food industry and the government to intensify efforts to reduce the amount of sodium (salt) Americans consume daily." See physorg.com article.

"Recently, the American Heart Association lowered their recommendation to no more than 1500 mg of sodium daily for the general public, after a report from the Centers for Disease Control found that a majority of the American population either have high blood pressure or are at high risk for developing it."

See Sodium in Foods

See Groups Vulnerable to Salt.

See Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Did you know that taking prescription drugs is a major cause of salt sensitivity? - Read about Amitriptyline and other antidepressants. And read about Prescribed Steroids, HRT and other Drugs.

Metabolic Syndrome increases Salt Sensitivity

See Diabetesincontrol article. "The blood pressure of patients with metabolic syndrome showed significantly greater sensitivity to high- and low-sodium diets compared with a control group, researchers found."

This webpage has information about Sodium in Foods.

Lindsey Davies, new president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, is calling for urgent action to reduce salt and transfat content in food

See Denis Campbell's article in the Guardian. It's good that Lindsey Davies is speaking so unambiguously. "The food industry should be about producing food, and food is a basic requirement of a healthy, productive life and wellbeing. Adding things to food that reduce health and wellbeing, such as transfats or too much salt, strikes me as profoundly irresponsible," is clear. The powers that be should have been saying this long ago. The dangers of high sodium intake have long been known but not acted upon.

Both Labour and Tory administrations allowed the food companies free rein to ladle more and more salt into their products, thus damaging irrevocably the health of innocent salt-sensitive purchasers. Let's look at what successive governments with their successive Department of Health personnel have done about recommendations made in regard to salt, high consumption of which is the cause of a huge proportion of the ill-health and disability of the nation:

The Department of Health's Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA) was disbanded in March 2000.

The following information was taken on July 11th 2006 from http://www.actiononsalt.org.uk/recommendations.htm but since then appears to have been removed from the internet. I find it surprising that such interesting information has been removed. It's a good job I copied and pasted it when I did. The website itself http://www.actiononsalt.org.uk/ is still on the internet.

Recommendations made about salt

"COMA

1 Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease 1994 This COMA report considered the evidence for a causal relationship between the consumption of sodium and both the level of blood pressure and the rise in blood pressure with age. A statement in the report said it recommended: "A reduction in the average intake of common salt (sodium chloride) by the adult population from the current level of about 9g/day to about 6g/day. There needs to be a gradual reduction in the amount of sodium from salt added to processed food and food manufacturers, caterers, and individuals should explore and grasp the opportunity for reducing the sodium content of foods and meals." The Chief Medical Officer at that time, accepted all the recommendations in this COMA report except for the recommendation to reduce salt. The reason for this is not clear but is believed to be pressure from industry. Department of Health (1994), "Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease", HMSO, London.

2 Dietary Reference Values 1991 This COMA report considered that: "Current sodium intakes are needlessly high and we caution against any trend towards increased intakes". It set its recommended intake for salt, as with all the other recommended intakes for nutrients, on the basis of the balance of risks and benefits, which might practically be expected to occur. The RNI for a particular population group is defined as the amount of the nutrient that is enough or more than enough for about 97% of the people in this group. The Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for sodium for adults was set at 1600 mg/day. This is equivalent to approximately 4g of salt, if all the sodium was present in the diet as sodium chloride. This is considerably less than the present intake of 9-12g. Department of Health (1991), "Dietary Reference values for food, energy and nutrients for the United Kingdom", HMSO, London."

I wonder why The Chief Medical Officer in the early '90s apparently did nothing to implement the recommendation of a maximum of 4g of salt a day, and apparently gave greater consideration to the desires of the food industry than to the health of the nation, and I wonder how many deaths and how much terrible suffering he was, therefore, personally responsible for? And I wonder why his successors in the post were so tardy in taking effective steps to give warnings about salt consumption? - Political considerations? - What though, could be more important in this matter than the health of the members of public - the electorate - the tax-payers, in fact?

I consider the failure to put pressure on food manufacturers and caterers to reduce the sodium content of foods and meals until recent times to be a dereliction of duty of successive political administrations and health departments. - I remember buying McCance and Widdowson's 'Composition of Foods' in the late '90s, at considerable cost, in order to discover how much sodium there was in food. There was no way consumers could get this information from the pack. - The people of this country have been very ill-served in this matter.

See sodium in food.

Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Groups vulnerable to salt.

Obesity in IVF pregnancy doubles risk of miscarriage

See BBC News article. It is such a shame that overweight people are mostly unaware - because the health professionals do not tell them - that reducing their intake of salt and salty food will reduce their excess weight by reducing their excess fluid retention/water weight, caused by sensitivity to salt. It is even more important, during pregnancy, that women keep their salt/sodium intake low, because the natural hormone changes that occur during pregnancy make them even more vulnerable to salt during the period of pregnancy. It is salt reduction, rather than calorie reduction, that should be advocated. Salt reduction would reduce the risk of miscarriage, as well as the risk of high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, excessive weight gain and many other health problems associated with pregnancy, both IVF pregnancies and non-IVF pregnancies.
See Pregnancy Advice.