Salt

Recommended by who?   And for what purpose?

The USDA RDI only recommends 2.3 grams of sodium, or one teaspoon of salt.  But best case, this recommendation comes from incomplete studies, showing an increase of salt can cause a very slight increase in blood pressure for a few days, or hours.  There’s really never been any basis for it, or the idea for salt restriction, and it stays in place with propaganda and inertia.

Worst case, the benefits of salt are well known (and really, those benefits have been known for millennia), and this restriction was suggested to impair people’s health, and put them under even more stress, and to help sell more aldosterone antagonists, which are very successful drugs that lower blood pressure by antagonizing aldosterone (aldosterone rises during salt restriction, and lowers when sodium intake is increased, and this well demonstrated fact should be thrown in the face of EVERY doctor who recommends salt restriction to people with high blood pressure, its easy to find studies that demonstrate this).

This is why Ray always suggested “salt to taste.”  However, I think salt can be used in much higher quantities than this, depending on purpose or conditions.  For example, if you are very active, sweating a lot more, increasing fluid intake, or in a hot and dry climate, you might what to experiment with electrolyte pills (aka, salt pills).

“When mice are chilled, they spontaneously prefer slightly salty water, rather than fresh, and it increases their heat production (Dejima, et al., 1996). When rats are given 0.9 per cent sodium chloride solution with their regular food, their heat production increases, and their body fat, including abdominal fat, decreases (Bryant, et al., 1984).” -Ray Peat