The British campaign group Action on Salt (formerly Consensus Action on Salt & Health, or CASH) organizes an annual ‘World Salt Awareness Week’ to raise awareness of the health effects of excess salt. In 2023, ‘World Salt Awareness Week’ will be held between 14 and 20 March. Salt is an essential nutrient for various functions in our body. So, there is some debate about how much salt is desirable to eat, but what is clear is that you cannot stay healthy if you don’t eat salt at all.
Sea salt is rich in minerals and minerals, so it is good for health.ㅣSource: Getty Image Bank
How Salt Affects Your Health
Salt is one of the minerals that is important for survival, allowing nerves to send and receive electrical impulses, keeping muscles strong and helping cells and the brain to work properly. As it is a nutrient that the body cannot produce, it must be consumed directly. Most people think of salt as sodium. Salt contains about 40% sodium, the remaining 60% being chlorine, small amounts of sulfate ions, and various minerals.
Therefore, reducing salt by considering ‘salt = sodium’ does not reduce sodium intake. Of course, excessive salt intake increases the possibility of developing high blood pressure because it exceeds the recommended daily intake of 2,000 mg of sodium. This is because eating salty foods increases the amount of blood in order to reduce the concentration of sodium in the body, leading to high blood pressure. In addition, if a patient suffering from cardiovascular disease eats a lot of salt, blood pressure rises, which can cause a stroke or heart attack. There are also studies that show that high salt has a direct effect on cerebral infarction and increases the death rate of cerebral infarction. In addition, salt causes inflammation in the stomach and damages tissue cells, creating mutant cells such as cancer cells, increasing the risk of stomach cancer.
However, in some cases, reducing too much salt can have adverse health effects. Cardiac diseases such as heart failure and arrhythmias, not related to high blood pressure, are typical. According to a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), heart disease patients with sodium deficiency have a high risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, and death. Sodium regulates body fluid volume (fluid in the body, including blood, lymph, and tissue fluid), and heart disease patients have a reduced heart contractile function, so if you eat less sodium, it cannot blood goes to the whole body. In addition, a lack of sodium, which regulates the heart rate, prevents the heart from contracting properly, which is fatal for heart disease patients.
Characteristics of each type of salt that is beneficial to health
The daily salt intake recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 5 g (2,000 mg sodium). The average sodium intake of Koreans is 4,646mg, which is more than twice the amount recommended by WHO, which is a serious level.
Haidaq nutrition counseling nutritionist Park Jung-won said, “Dishes that use fresh ingredients or that are eaten as food-specific salt and sodium are added to about 20% of the total intake, and the rest is consumed through instant food and complex chemically synthesized seasonings. do,” he said. In addition, he emphasized that “the biggest reason to be careful about salt intake is to limit the amount of sodium contained in salt more than is necessary.”
With the development of salty foods such as soy sauce, salted fish, pickles, and salty eating habits, as well as added sodium from prepared foods, we already eat enough salt. Therefore, eating good and healthy salt is as important as reducing salt.
Salt can be divided into ‘rock salt’ obtained from the mountains and ‘sun dried salt’ obtained from the sea, depending on where it is collected. Ore is rock salt that has been turned into ore over a long period of time after the sea turned into land due to a tectonic shift in the past. An example of rock salt is Himalayan pink salt. The specific gravity of sodium chloride in rock salt is about 95-98%, and there are almost no minerals. The salt we are familiar with is sea salt rather than rock salt.
Bay salt is made by confining seawater in salt ponds and evaporating moisture and harmful components with sunlight and wind. Domestic sea salt is famous for its minerals and rich minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, potassium and iron. Sodium chloride is about 80-88%, and the rest is minerals and minerals. Sea salt, which has a high water content, is mainly used to pickle cabbage when making kimchi, or to make sauces and salted fish.
Another type of salt is self-salt made with the traditional Korean salt manufacturing method. The seawater that comes in at high tide passes through the dry tidal flats, reducing its salinity, and is boiled in a pot for about 10 hours to get salt. Compared to sea salt, it has less bacteria and impurities and is rich in minerals, so it has a mild salty taste.
There is also flower salt which is made by dissolving bay salt in clean water to remove impurities and then boiling it again. Kosher salt is named because the shape of the crystals resembles that of a snowflake. It is used in cooking as a soup or side dish.
Refined salt is salt made by refining technology using electrodialysis. It is made by passing seawater through an ionized water membrane with fine pores to remove impurities and heavy metals. Although it can produce a large amount of salt quickly, minerals and minerals are also removed during the electrodialysis process, and sodium chloride has a specific gravity of 99%, which is the highest among salts. It is often used for seasoning salt with added MSG (sodium glutamate), which is commonly used at home.
There is also bamboo salt which is baked nine times over a hot pine wood fire at 600 degrees after putting bay salt in a bamboo tube and covering it with a red clay lid. Bamboo salt is used more for beauty or disease treatment than for cooking due to the addition of the mineral components of sea salt and the good components of bamboo.
Salt is essential for the body, how to eat wisely
Park Jeong-won, a nutritionist, advised, “Although the amount of salt consumed may vary depending on the individual’s age, gender, amount of physical activity and health condition, it is recommended to eat less than 5g per day.” In addition, “many people eat more salt than the normal recommended amount, so if possible, reduce the use of salt when cooking food, and try to reduce salt intake in normal eating habits.” In particular, he added, “After stress or excessive exercise, sodium consumption in the body rises rapidly, so you should refrain from eating stressful food.”
In the case of highly seasoned Korean food, 40% of the total sodium is consumed through seasoning. You can reduce your sodium intake by seasoning with natural ingredients such as garlic, green onion, chives, green peppers, ginger and onions instead of seasoning. Instead of seasoning with salt, you can also use seasonings with a strong smell and taste, such as pepper, red pepper powder, curry, mustard, and wasabi. You can taste the salty taste you need by seasoning food with potassium instead of salt. Low sodium salt, low salt soy sauce, and low salt soy bean paste sold on the market use less salt and add potassium instead of sodium to give them a salty taste. However, people taking medication for high blood pressure or who have reduced kidney function can build up too much potassium in the body, so it is recommended that you consult your doctor before eating low-salt foods that use potassium.
Also, if you eat too much salt, drink enough water to help your body restore its desired sodium-to-water ratio. Eating fresh vegetables with meals is also helpful.
Support = Haidaq Nutrition Counseling Park Jung-win (nutritionist)
