Did you stop using salt?

[greeninlosangeles]

I really want to do it, especially after finding out how healthy my favorite Braggs Aminos are (GMO soy, MSG, alcohol) or any soy based stuff, all other salts are inorganic form, like a rock, not digestible.
If you did stop, what natural spices you use instead? How hard it is to stop?

[livingatthetop]

salt is a kind of thing you can use once you have no health problems its perfectly healthy.

[Shivananda]

You need at least small amounts of salt in your diet for several reasons...

1. Your body needs it. You and I are made up of water and salt and a bunch of other stuff, but salt is close to the top of the list. Communities and trade centers used to be built around salt licks and other natural sources, because it was so critical to health. And lose too much of it, such as when exercising hard and sweating a lot, and you can quickly lose consciousness, and in extreme cases, die.

2. Things taste better with it. Small (SMALL!) amounts of salt make even sweet beverages taste... well... sweeter! That's why grandma salted her grapefruit!

3. Whole salt, natural salt, like Celtic sea salt, is an important source of trace minerals. Morton's salt, in the supermarket, is 99.99% sodium chloride. But natural sea salt is about 85% sodium chloride, and 15% trace minerals like manganese and selenium, etc.

[Gosia]

Hi greeninlosangeles,

I am in the same boat as you. Fighting my salt addiction has not been easy. I even had days where I went and bought chips, it can be that addictive. It is not an impossible task though. I think I am over the other side of the river now, phew! Eating lots of yummy, satisfying fruit does the trick to me. Digestable, non-toxic salt occurs naturally in non-sweet fruit, such as tomatoes and avocado; and celery, for example. Once you stop using salt, you will notice how salty foods can be, and you will be totally satisifed with the salt from these foods. And, foods with the added salt will taste yuck.

All the best,
Gosia.

[misslinda]

I've pretty much eliminted it for the most part. I don't even think about it. If I do use it, it's maybe less than a teaspoon of finely ground grey celtic sea salt. At times, I will buy raw sauerkraut,crackers which does have celtic also but I eat sparingly as well.

For flavoring, I use cayenne,tarragon,dill,lemon juice for zing.

:)

[Sharon in Colorado]

I still use here and there, but am aware that it's an inorganic source of sodium, and not useable by the body.

I know that once you stop using it altogether, you lose the taste for it and no longer desire it.

I've posted about this before - I've dehydrated celery, lemon and tomato and then grinded it in the coffee grinder - the flavor is savory and you get a natural form of useable sodium.

Would be interested to see where you discovered sea salt is 85% sodium chloride Shiv. I was under the impression that all forms of salt are between 96-98% sodium chloride whatever the form. Even if it was 85% that's still inorganic which the body can't use. Plants convert it into a useable source for us.

[greeninlosangeles]

Do you use those dehydrated veggies in even amounts to make a powder?

[Sharon in Colorado]

Hey Green,

It is hard to say, as the celery shrinks down to practically nothing. You could easily use a head of celery, 2-3 sliced roma tomatoes and 1 lemon, sliced. Be careful not to cut down the celery too thin, as you might only have threads of floss after they are done dehydrating.

I ground them all up seprately as well. I guarantee that when you mix them all together in a jar and smell it, your mouth will literally water up. :D

Let me know how it turns out! :)

[Sunshine9]

Sodium from fruits and veggies is ideal, but it may not be enough. It is one of the most important minerals in the body, so using small amounts of really good salt is sometimes necessary. The "emaciated raw foodist" usually results from having too little sodium.

[EmeraldGlow]

The "emaciated raw foodist" usually results from having too little sodium.

Is this according to the SAD diet requirements? Maybe we do not need as much sodium as we thought? When being raw the bodies requirements for different things change. Like protein for example. We do not need as much protein as the averege SAD eater would need. Would anyone care to elaborate on this? Here's a post from Alissa on the protein thing:

http://rawfoodtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3708

If you want to up your sodium intake celery is really good for that :D !

[rawpriestess]

the word Salary, comes from the amount of salt they paid their workers, it was so precious. but that was a long time ago

I love Braggs, so decided it must be an addiction, as I would stand in the kithcne with a bowl of something marinating in braggs, and eat almost the entire thing, before it even got into the dehydrator. so, I figured that I must be getting some kind of addictive response to it, that and the more I ate, the more I wanted, etc.

I love olives, and often use my olive soak water in recipes as a salt substitute, or just add some sliced olives.

I also use sun dried tomatoes and celery

I have used Celtic Sea Salt, but prefer to use spices instead. or nothing at all.

I have never been a big salt eater anyway, so it was easy for me to give it up, the only thing I ate it on when I was SAD was cooked brussel sprouts. That was it, never even liked it on popcorn.

I know Alissa sells Celtic Sea salt on her site, so I would try that, she's done all the research, so you know it's good.

[JMD]

Hmm great ?? I would love to eat salt---esp i love raw dressings in vegan restaurants...so yummy but for today they don't agree with me and i feel so swollen the next day. So i rarely use it...maybe only if out...very evry rare though. I juice and eat lots of celery which is supposed to be great natural sources for the body and it helped me overcome my mini-addiction to salt and over spicing my food.

[Rawmommie]

I'm not a big salt eater, but when I don't have some salt in my diet, I get low BP and lightheaded. As soon as I add a little sea salt to my salads, I'm fine.

[Shivananda]

I still use here and there, but am aware that it's an inorganic source of sodium, and not useable by the body.
....
Would be interested to see where you discovered sea salt is 85% sodium chloride Shiv. I was under the impression that all forms of salt are between 96-98% sodium chloride whatever the form. Even if it was 85% that's still inorganic which the body can't use. Plants convert it into a useable source for us.

No, this is not correct. I'm afraid that either that you've misunderstood something or that somebody has steered you wrong. Sea salt absolutely IS usable by the body, and the organic/inorganic stuff you mentioned is not scientifically accurate. Michio Kushi, the great macrobiotic pioneer in this country, was the one who first showed me the actual chemical analysis of natural sun dried sea salt. In macrobiotic cooking you don't use sea salt for a salty taste, which you can readily get from seaweed and tamari and celery, etc., so much as for the important trace minerals you can get from it.

There IS a valid argument against using ordinary supermarket salt, like Morton's, which I already stated... that it is just plain, pure sodium chloride (plus a touch of anticaking agent, and in some cases, iodine), with everything else stripped out of it... because all that other stuff is very VALUABLE, and can be sold separately to chemical companies. It's true that you are better off getting iodine from plants, rather than from ordinary table salt. Plants don't make sodium chloride "more available", but they do make iodine more available. Sounds like this fact may have gotten garbled into what you understood about sodium chloride. Unfortunately plants don't contain much iodine unless they grow where there is salt spray from the ocean. Which is precisely why iodine came to be introduced into regular table salt, to contribute to general thyroid health, because it was not readily availble in most foods.

Hence, my recommendation that you use naturally harvested sea salt, such as the Celtic sea salt Alissa uses and sells, for its natural mineral content, including iodine.

[tglasco4]

I did 30 days without salt. It was not fun. At first I thought that the food started tasting better, but after about 20 days, I was honest with myself and decided it tasted nasty (talking veggies) without salt. I saw slight changes in that I didn't seem to hold as much water. I was glad to get back to using salt once that experiment was over. I use it on my salads. I don't use anywhere near as much as I did prior to raw, but it has been a natural, progressive change. Not something that I forced. I think indeed as a society people consume too much sodium, but I believe its mostly what is in processed food (if you call it food) and sodas and such. The sodium content is so concentrated in those things that any additional salt added (like to french fries) is pure poison. In the raw diet though, its much different because there is no consumption of sodium dense foods. Its mostly fruit and veggies.

Peace.

Todd

[sport]

I was honest with myself and decided it tasted nasty (talking veggies) without salt.
Todd
I had not used salt for many many years until I went raw so can not agree withe this. I think that veggies taste fantastic on their own so I guess it is a matter of what you are used to.
Since going raw I bought some Herbamere Spicy in the health food shop and just use it on my mashed avacocado. I have now gotten used to this and would find an avacado tasteless without it. I recall that I enjoyed the avo salt free before I developed the habit so I am sure that is all it is. A habit.

[Sharon in Colorado]

I think for every one pioneer in health for the assimilation of inorganic salt we will find others against it Shiv. There's plenty of info available out there, including those from bio chemists, scientists and doctors who have researched the body's usability of it. It would be better to get the research info instead of going back and forth on the subject though.

I agree with Sport on this. I feel the same about salt, it's more of a taste thing. But why does it burn the tongue, cause water retention, excite the tastebuds, etc. Even the 'natural' salt. And I haven't used conventional salt in years.

In light of Alissa's recent post though, I will retreat. I don't want to continue to post anything that may be against her philosophy.

Good bye and goodnight. ;)

[Shivananda]

Tglasco4, you make a very important point, and one that is way too easy to forget... "commonsense wisdom" about conventional cooked diets often does NOT apply to live food diets. And this is definitely one of those places... processed foods contain a LOT of salt, so limiting salt intake with conventional diets is definitely appropriate for many, and sometimes medically required.

But with raw foods, depending on your food choices, you could actually become salt deprived. And just like a sweaty athlete passing out because their sodium level drops too low, we can feel lightheaded and nauseous when we get insufficient salt, and soon become seriously ill if the problem isn't rectified quickly. That's why "sports beverages" like Gatorade all have salt in them.

And the larger issue, which has been in the back of my mind to say something about for a while, is that I see folks keep dragging in principles from cooked food theories of various sorts to this discussion board, rather than just following Alissa's (and other raw experts') guidance. Many of those ideas, even ones from vegan cookbooks, just don't belong on the table here.

I think you have to be willing to challenge everything you already "know" about food and diet, to be able to stop eating cooked food and take this way of eating live foods to heart.

[JMD]

Shivananda...

I would be curious to see what you would suggest someone do if they are 100% raw--like myself and react to even the slightest amount of any sea salt..I have tried them trust me....

I use a lot of celery in my green drinks and dressings...Would that be enough in your opinion??

[Jackie1995]

I haven't used any added salt for months. I don't miss it, because everything tastes just fine without it.

I enter my daily food intake into Fitday.com, as part of an experiment, and my sodium with no added salt and no processed foods - just raw fruits, veggies - is averaging about 800 mg daily.

Recently, I read an article that said the RDA for sodium has been reduced from 2500 to 1500 per day, with most folks getting along fine on between 1000 and 1500 daily.

They mention most Americans get between 5000 and 7000 daily, with those eating fast foods getting even more.

*yikes*

Here's the link:
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2004/02/02-17-04tdc/02-17-04dscihealth-05.asp

I don't think my intake is too low, but if I start feeling weird I'll eat more celery.

Oh, I also discovered beet greens taste pretty salty to me, too. I eat a lot of them lately. I blend them up into my smoothies. Not "green" smoothies anymore. "Brown" is more like it. Looks like jello chocolate pudding.

[tglasco4]

Shiv of course I wholeheartedly agree with you. Many times we look at things with raw in the same light as cooked. This is a mistake. Everything from salt intake, protein intake to calories. I workout very regularly and with pretty high intensity and I believe my body needs the salt I intake.

But as someone already alluded, to each his or her own. As for me, at this point I am not of the mind to do away with salt. If my body tells me to reduce or eliminate it as I continue to eat raw, then so be it, if not, I won't make a big deal of it.

Peace.

[Shivananda]

>>I would be curious to see what you would suggest someone do if they are 100% raw--like myself and react to even the slightest amount of any sea salt..I have tried them trust me....

I understand. You may be reacting to one of the trace minerals, or to the inevitable microorganisms that get caught up in the evaporation pools. But in any case, if it doesn't work for you, don't do it! There is no such thing as a rule that works for every body, all the time.

>> I use a lot of celery in my green drinks and dressings...Would that be enough in your opinion??

My opinion is worthless to you on this point. Get a good nutritional blood analysis. That's the only sure way to tell what's actually going on inside your body as a result of the food choices you make. .

[Vandy]

Is Alissa's salt fine ground??? Does anyone else use it/like it??? I have always been a pink Himalayan salt user...but which do you think is better... himalayan or pink??

I feel bad for using pink now for some reason... should i?