Ideas On Getting Salt Into The Diet

Firstly, I am aware of the 'how much salt to go into your diet' thread. This is a different thread. This is a thread of HOW do I get salt into my diet.

If adding salt into sugary OJ/creamy milk makes you want to heave, what other options are there?

I love salt, but it bears no place in a liquid that is sweet or milky. Not for me, anyway.

The best idea I have come up with, is making my own bone broth and just adding salt this way.

Also, I have found cottage cheese to be quite high in sodium. Not as nutritious as milk, but can be purchased in super low fat varities, it's high in protein and despite its vulgar appearance, is actually quite delicious. However, it's not going to offer sufficient sodium if you are drinking up to a gallon of liquids per day (perhaps not this much, but if you're doing things properly, a large portion of your diet will be liquid).

Perhaps I just need to man up, put it in water and down it? I'd rather enjoy salt though, than it become a process that I end up resenting and hating, each day. I know salt is good for me, and I react favourably to it, so it HAS to be part of my diet.

Any ideas?

I add salt to my cottage cheese, applesauce, hagendaaz ice cream, potatoes, plain Greek yogurt and pretty much anything I eat really. I'm with you on not really liking it in sweet beverages though. I was just putting it in my mouth in 1/4-1/2 tsp amounts and chasing it with O.J. or milk but then I read you should only do this a pinch per sip of fluid! OOPS! So now I take my salt in pinches with sips of fluid in between instead of downing a large amount in one swallow. I was surprised how good salt is on ice cream! Hope that helps a little.

I melt chocolate and put salt in it and re-set it. Mmm.
Potatoes can take mountains of salt, especially with coconut oil.
Masa arepas with lots of salt. Sushi rice with lots of salt. I make a sweet chilli sauce quite often with heaps of sugar and salt.

The more I have the more I miss it when it is gone, and notice my health decline :)

Salt in farmers cheese, salt the milk before boiling it. You can barely feel the salt even if you put too much. Once I put two tablespoons instead of one, when I made farmers cheese in the morning, and I wasn't able to eat anything salty for the rest of the day.

I find salt in gelatin sweets (eg., gummy bears) not very perceptible. That said, if I were drinking a lot of liquids, I would just chase down some salt, so as not to spoil the milk/coffee/OJ/etc with too much salt. Once you learn how to do it, it becomes easy and natural no pain involved.

Salt is amazing with potato (mashed), mixed with creamy cottage cheese. It becomes almost sexual/orgasmic for me, lol. It's my favourite dish at the moment. Sometimes I throw in some oysters, just to add some nutritional punch. It's just that starch makes me feel like crap, so I want to move away from potatoes, ideally. I want my bowell health to be as perfect as I can make it, and starch just doesn't belong with that way of thinking. I will always love starch, but it's just too problematic. For instance, I can notice benefits from a carrot salad when I am drinking just milk and OJ. But if I add starch in, I don't notice any benefits from the carrot salad at all. So that kind of tells me something.

I've tried chasing down salt before glugging down OJ/milk, but just find it too intense. One time I did this, I was actually sick all over the floor. I guess if you did it with enough water, it wouldn't be so bad - so I may try that. The benefits are worth it.

If concerned about increasing salt in the short term, think about taking baths while adding baking soda or salt (sodium chloride, without additives) for absorption.

My experience is that with depleted metabolism, some people crave salt and other people dislike salt. Either situation is improved when metabolism is restored. I don't know for sure what factors nudge people into the "dislike salt" category. But factors like protein, thyroid, pregnenolone, progesterone, infrared & sunlight are examples that have relieved (I was tempted to say licked :->) salt aversion. I have seen taste-for-salt consistently improve as other supportive measures come online.

I similarly find that it is more pleasant to increase salt intake when added in cooking. Broths are one good idea. A different method might be to add a pinch of baking soda (sodium bicarb) to a sweet or tart juice, say, orange or cherry juice. A small amount will add fizz (and CO2) while adding variety to beverages.

I have noticed it is much easier to ingest extra salt when it is combined with
potato ( mainly french fries) and fruits (usually sour or astringent tasting fruits).
I can easily take half a tsp of salt when i eat it with guava or orange, not orange juice.
My guess is that food high in potassium tastes better with extra salt.
I asked RP about salt causing gut irritation. He recommended baking soda as
salt source. But i have to warn that extra baking soda can mess up pH and
can cause health problems. RP mentioned that alkaline minerals do
compensate for each other to great extent. I try extra calcium ( not exceeding 2500 mg) and
potassium instead of increasing salt . I also keep a salt shaker close by and whenever
i drink water i put a small pinch in the mouth and let it dissolve and then chase it by water.
I never tried salt bath but one can avoid gut irritation using bath.
I agree with aguilaroja that once you fix your metabolism/thyroid you would not need
large amount of salt to minimize symptoms. Adequate protein is easier to eat and
it helps a lot with all the health issues including water retention.
Salt and albumin both are needed to bind water.

I've tracked my salt intake by measuring out 1/2 cup into a bowl and only using salt from that bowl. (Living alone makes it easy keep track). It averages about 38 days to use it all up, which is about .6 tsp/day. That's a third of what I would like to get.

My tastes are the same as the OPs, more than a tiny pinch in milk or oj is pretty repugnant to me. I love salt on solid food and broths, but just don't eat that much of those.

I sometimes put a 1/2 tsp in some water, swirl it around and down it. The taste of it varies, I guess by how much I need it. I never heard that a big dose like that is not recommended. What is the issue with it?

mittir has a good point with the potassium seeming to synergize with sodium...ive noticed that and it seems a pretty accurate statement. I don't know exactly why, but Im thinking it has to do with the whole rennin aldosterone system. It seems that the more water and potassium you consume, the easier it is to eliminate extra salt. If you were to only eat solid food that was low in potassium, you probably could get by on a bare minimum of like 500mg sodium in a day. If you consume more liquid and/or potassium, you will lose some sodium during the excretion of the extra water and potassium and possibly lose some blood volume as a consequence, and will likely get a salt craving. I usually just rely on the salt present in cheese these days as far as food goes, but whenever I drink coffee, juice, tea or anything with potassium, I usually put a small pinch of salt with it if im not eating cheese around the same time. I find it helps keep false cravings away...because often we will crave a certain food simply because its really salty and usually not too watery. Best luck. Just think....liquid, potassium...have a little salt. No liquid or potassium (or just small amount), less or no need to add salt. Salt cravings are usually pretty apparent and definite...so it might not actually be salt alone you crave at the time if there is any doubt. If you think a thick soup, gravy, chips, or something like that, that is dense and salty, sounds good at the time, its probably a good indicator your body would like some salt

Does anyone know if sodium bicarbonate would have similar temperature increasing effects to that of normal table salt?

Hi everyone, I have a quick question regarding salt that is completely unrelated to the topic of this thread. My apologies for this. I thought I would dump it here, though.

RP says that salt is ABSOLUTELY essential. I believe a lot of the things that he says about salt. I personally see the benefits from increased salt consumption above anything else that I have tried from the RP dietary approach. So yeah, it defintely works for me (many, many tsp's per day in my case).

My question is related to the fruitarians who do the 30 bananas a day thing.

Maybe some of you are aware of a guy called Durianrider. He basically does YouTube vids preaching about the benefits of 80/10/10. He started as a raw vegan, but now admits to eating the occasional vegetarian pizza and other things that allign with 80/10/10, but aren't neccesarily raw (rice, soya milk, low fat cereals). He always says that fruit is always the preferred choice though, and only eats this other rubbish when he is on the road and doesn't have the capability of carrying fruit and a blender around with him on his bike (he cycles everywhere).

Anyway, Durianrider regularly eats 30-50 bananas each day, and he empthasises the importance of hydration (he drinks many litres of water each day). He says that every time you urinate, your shower must be clear. He says that too much colour means that you are not hydrated enough, or you have been taking in too much salt (which wouldn't happen on a fruitarian diet I would imagine, given that sodium is sparse in these foods). Of course, Matt Stone sees it opposite. Clear urine means you need more salt, as, according to him, salt increases your metabolic rate (which I believe it does!).

I plugged in to the cronometer 36 bananas for a days calorific intake (an average day for Durianrider). Each banana at 150g each. It equates to 4,800 calories (high calorie is good IMO), 1200g of carbs, 17g of fat (low fat is good, Peat would like this) but of course comes with drawbacks. Its low in calcium. The calcium/phosphorus ratio is not good (although isn't drastically bad like you would get from muscle meats, grains and beans). It's got zero b12 (how relevant that is, I'm not sure - people who eat meat can still be deficient) and has no vitamin D (no problem for Durianrider who lives in sunny Australia).

But, to get straight to the point - the diet has 54mg of sodium! That's 2% of the recommended dietary guidelines, and woefully inadeqaute if we were going by RPs guidelines.

I'm not going to lie, I watch a lot of Durianrider's videos (the dude is a bit of a douche, but in a weird entertaining sort of way). I have tried the raw food/fruitarian thing myself but it didn't work for me. Bananas are kind of important to these guys because they are calorie dense, packed with nutrition and easily assimilated into a blender (unlike mangos, oranges, apples, papayas and most other fruits that are not as nutrionally dense as bananas and are just time consuming and laborious to prepare for consumption, due to their skins). Bananas, as long as they are ripe to eat, you can just peel them and drop them into the blender. Anyway, bananas were very allergenic for me. Mentally, I felt horrendous on them.

So, knowing a lot about Durianrider like I do; I know the guy has been doing this for over 10 years now. What are the long term implications of his diet? He is consuming a pathetic amount of salt each day (from his fruit), he has an attitude that salt is the devil and it has to be restricted to zero in ideal circumstances, and, to make matters worse, he drinks gallons of water each day (which makes his salt situation even worse).

Perhaps the low PUFA in his diet, which he has done now for a long time now, protects him to some extent?

Surely, going by what RP says, Durianrider should be an extremely sick man. His kidneys must be crying out for salt? All that potassium and next to zero of sodium?

The consequence of a very high potassium, low sodium diet might be sky high aldosterone, the hormone which retains sodium, which is associated with kidney problems. I don't know however if the frutarian diet has other benefits to the kidney that makes up for this negative aspect.

Also, why couldn't you salt your fruits?

I guess you could do that. It's not something that I would choose to do personally, if I was still a fruitarian, as saltiness and sweetness don't belong together on my palate. But yes, if I was still a raw foodist, I would definitely re-introduce himylayan rock salt (in fact, that's exactly what David Wolfe uses - so not all raw foodists are oblivious to the importance of salt).

The thing is, it's not just Durianrider. A lot of these fruitarians are very anti-salt. Yet some of them have been on the diet for decades, with no signs of kidney problems. Maybe you're right, though. Perhaps there are other benefits to a fruitarian/raw food diet that makes up for this?

I'm not trying to be Colombo here. I'm not trying to burst Ray's bubble about salt. Salt has wonderful benefits for me. I just find it odd that these people can thrive on barely any salt at all. Perhaps they are deuding themselves that they are thriving?

I try never to generalize about things, but fruitarians/raw foodists do come across as being slightly defensive in their YouTube vids (some of them, including Durianrider, somewhat aggressive/antagonistic). Of course, fruitarians will tell you that this is their true spirit coming to the surface. Their real life driving force, that has been liberated from the elimination of cooked foods, and animal products. You could argue that because they are a minority, they kind of have to behave like this. They have to protect their cult? Well, eating a RP diet gets me FAR more negative attention every single time I go to eat a meal (6 months down the road, I still get comments at work), than eating a raw food diet (which I could blag - just tell everyone that I am on a long term detox). So yeah, eating a banana smoothie would be far more socially acceptable than eating a big portion meat with two cans of coke. Or, eating cottage cheese washed down with a quart of OJ. Or, having milk for my dinner with copius tablespoons of sugar (this one gets the weirdest looks of all). I think people actually feel sorry for me. And unfortuantely, whenever I decline a meal that I can see has been fried in vegetable oil, I'm afraid you do sometimes encounter people who are actually deeply offended by your rejection of their offer/gift. Which kind of turns you into even more of an outcast. The vast majority of them think that I am a bit simple. But my stress response is far better on this diet, than the fruitarian diet. I can deal with all that level of attention just fine. That's just my story, though. Who knows, my lower levels of stress these days could be down to my increased intake of salt.

But anyway, to get back to the point I was making above, these fruitarians, despite their percieved behavoural issues (my perception), they aren't lacking in kidney health through their 'lack' of salt.

Maybe their kidneys are fine, but I'm not sure they're thriving overall. To me their faces tend to look like ***t.

I guess you could do that. It's not something that I would choose to do personally, if I was still a fruitarian, as saltiness and sweetness don't belong together on my palate.

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I think you could do something slightly different, like putting salt in a small amount of water and drink it quickly, according to cravings. I wonder if these frutarians have salt cravings.

I think Peat said that the ideal diet would be a frutarian diet if there was enough information about the combination of fruits that would give you all the amino acids. Since we don't have this information, Peat said it isn't safe to be a frutarian. He didn't mention anything about salt, so maybe that's solved somehow when one consumes only fruits.

j. said:

Maybe their kidneys are fine, but I'm not sure they're thriving overall. To me their faces tend to look like s***.

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I hear what you're saying, but I get the same effect from the idealistic RP diet (high carb, low fat). Adding fats back in definitely rectifies the issue (in my case). Coconut oil beautifies the skin very well. When I was on skimmed milk, potatoes, OJ, sugar and coffee, my face looked just as gaunt as it did on an all fruit diet. The only difference being, is that RP's diet is also high in protein, whereas, the fruitarian diet isn't. So, my body always looks overly pumped on the RP diet (especially if dairy was the core of it - which it generally is). Being a fruitarian just made me look wimpy and skinny (with a gaunt looking face, to boot). Just my observations of my own physique.

dukez07 said:

I hear what you're saying, but I get the same effect from the idealistic RP diet (high carb, low fat). Adding fats back in definitely rectifies the issue (in my case).

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One of the many things I like about Peat is he is not as simplistic as "high carb, low fat". It seems to me that by adding the fats back in you are actually closer to the "idealistic" RP diet. When I see things like 80/10/10 I think "Lordy, how's that thyroid gland?"

I drink a lot of fluid...teas and juice, with just a little dairy and only add a little salt to the drinks. By the end of the day its probably only around 1 - 1.5 grams of sodium. I used to consume like 5 grams. I don't think its a huge deal either way...you just have to have enough, and usually you can tell by cravings. In a lot of cases salt isn't a problem...and people might be associating something else to a salt imbalance...I used to. Usually too much will make you thirsty...you might retain water for a few hours, then it gets eliminated. If you only consume a small amount of salt, the body is pretty good at conserving it. Sweating and alcohol are probably the only ways that salt gets depleted beyond a healthy level...or not consuming any for more than a few days in a row

I think the idea behind adding salt to liquid is to prevent a temporary lowering of blood volume if you consume a high amount of liquid. Using a good amount of sugar can prevent you needing to add salt, and its probably more beneficial. Of course fruit and fruit juice is generally already sweet enough...the salt is more so for unsweet fluids or soups / broths

pboy said:

If you only consume a small amount of salt, the body is pretty good at conserving it.

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...by increasing aldosterone which is associated with kidney damage.