First, let me remind certain food religionists: salt is salt is salt
is salt and sugar is sugar is sugar. There are no good forms of salt
and no good forms of sugar. Salt from a mine and salt from the sea
both have the same harmful effect; white sugar, natural brown sugar,
honey, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, whatever sweet have you.
All are sugars and all have the similar harmful effects. I know of
no harmless salt substitute that really tastes salty. Nutrisweet is
basically harmless to most people and can be used as a very
satisfactory replacement for sugars. A few people are unable to
tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti-chemicalists to circulate much
anti-nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider this
thought before dismissing nutrisweet--there is almost no food
substance that some people are not allergic to or unable to digest.
The fact that nutrisweet is made in a chemical vat and the fact that
some cannot handle nutrisweet does not make it "of the devil."
And its not all black and white with the other items either. Sea
salt does have certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt
and under certain very special conditions, eating small quantities
of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some forms of sugar are not
quite as harmful as other forms, though all are harmful.
The primary health problem caused by table salt is not that it
contributes to high blood pressure in people with poor kidneys,
though it does that. It is not that eating salt ruins the kidneys;
salt probably does not do that. The real problem with salt is that
sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering the release of
adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist
inflammation. When these hormones are at high levels in the blood,
the person often feels very good, has a sense of well-being. Thus
salt is a drug! And like many drugs of its type, salt is a
habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adrenals
with salt that we don't notice it. What we do notice is that we
think we like the taste of salted food and consider that food tastes
flat without it. But take away a person's salt shaker and they
become very uncomfortable. That's because the addict isn't getting
their regular dose.
What's wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal
fortitude is variable; many people's adrenals eventually fail to
respond to the prod of salt and the body begins to suffer from a
lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheriting weak adrenals
manifest semi-failure in childhood. The consequence is that
ordinary, irritating substances begin causing severe irritation. The
person becomes allergic to pollen, dust, foods, animal danders, etc.
We see asthma, hay fever, sinusitis, etc. Though one can then
discover specific allergens and try to remove them from the
environment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easily
by complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and
they may recover their full function; almost certainly their
function will improve. The asthma, allergies and etc., gradually
vanish.
Most of us don't need to eat salt as a nutrient. There's enough
sodium in one dill pickle to run a human body for a year. There's
enough natural sodium in many types of vegetables to supply normal
needs without using table salt. Perhaps athletes or other hard
working people in the tropics eating deficient food grown on
leached-out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day
may need a little extra sodium. Perhaps. Not having practiced in the
humid tropics myself, I have no definitive answer about this.
Unfortunately, the average American is entirely addicted to salt and
thinks food tastes lousy without it. To please the average consumer,
almost all prepared foods contain far too much salt for someone
suffering from exhausted adrenals. Interestingly, Canadians do not
like their foods nearly as salty as Americans, and prepared foods
like soups and the like in cans and packages that look just like the
ones in American supermarkets (though with French on the back panel)
have to be reformulated for our northern neighbors. I've observed
that Canadians are generally healthier than Americans in many
respects.
We would all be far better off consuming no salt at all. Those with
allergies or asthma should completely eliminate it for a month or
two and discover if that simple step doesn't pretty much cure them.
The trouble is that bakery bread is routinely two percent salt by
weight. Cheese is equally salted or even more so. Canned and frozen
prepared food products are all heavily salted. Restaurant meals are
always highly salted in the kitchen. If you want to avoid salt you
almost have to prepare everything yourself, bake your own bread,
abstain from cheese (though there are unsalted cheeses but even I
don't like the flavor of these), and abstain from restaurants. My
family has managed to eliminate all salt from our own kitchen except
for that in cheese, and we eat cheese rather moderately.
Sugar is a high-caloric non-food with enormous liabilities. First,
from the viewpoint of the universal formula for health, no form of
non-artificial sweetener carries enough nutrients with it to justify
the number of calories it contains, not even malt extract. White
refined sugar contains absolutely no nutrients at all; the "good" or
"natural" sweets also carry so little nutrition as to be next to
useless. Sweets are so far over on the bad end of the Health =
Nutrition / Calories scale that for this reason alone they should be
avoided.
However, healthy people can usually afford a small amount of sin;
why not make it sweets? In small quantity, sugars are probably the
easiest indiscretion to digest and the least damaging to the organ
systems. Although, speaking of sin, as Edgar Guest, the peoples'
poet, once so wisely quipped, (and my husband agrees) "Candy is
dandy, but liquor is quicker." Sugar is a powerful drug! People who
abuse sweets set up a cycle of addiction that can be very hard to
break. It starts when the body tries to regulate blood sugar. Kicked
up to high levels by eating sugar, the pancreas releases insulin.
But that is not the end of the chain reaction. Insulin regulates
blood sugar levels but also raises brain levels of an amino acid
called tryptophan. Tryptophan is the raw material the brain uses to
manufacture a neurotransmitter called serotonin. And serotonin plays
a huge role in regulating mood. Higher brain levels of serotonin
create a feeling of well-being. Eating sugar gives a person a
chemical jolt of happiness. Heavy hits of high-glycemic index starch
foods are also rapidly converted to sugar. So don't give your kids
sweets! Or huge servings of starch to mellow them out. It is wise
not to start out life a happiness addict with a severe weight
problem.
Now that the chemistry of sugar addiction is understood, there
currently is a movement afoot to cast the obese as helpless victims
of serotonin imbalances and to "treat" them with the same kinds of
serotonin-increasing happy drugs (like Prozac) that are becoming so
popular with the psychiatric set. This promises to be a multiple
billion dollar business that will capture all the money currently
flowing into other dieting systems and bring it right back to the
AMA/drug company/FDA nexus. The pitch is that when serotonin levels
are upped, the desire to eat drops and so is weight. This approach
is popular with the obese because it requires no personal
responsibility other than taking a pill that really does make them
feel happy. However, the same benefit can be had by strict adherence
to a low-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Eventually, the brain chemistry
rebalances itself and serotonin levels stabilize.