mtbc | Sugar and salt

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In Britain many brands of non-diet soda contain artificial sweeteners and there is currently talk of taxing sugary drinks. The tax is a good idea and I would be happy about it if I didn't expect them to further substitute with other sweeteners.

mst3kmoxie prefers to avoid artificial sweeteners because she is suspicious of their safety and, like her, I often find that non-sugar sweeteners don't quite taste right, even Stevia, which is disappointing. I am happy to have sugary drinks only infrequently but I'd rather that a few of them could just be less sweet instead of more artificially sweetened.

The same goes for salt, really. Not only do I not have much of a sweet tooth but I also rarely add salt when I am cooking. Much convenience food, especially soup, tastes too salty for me. At least there aren't strange non-salt substitutes, as far as I know. My weakness is more for foods like mature cheese.

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From:

gerald_duck

I definitely file potassium chloride under "strange non-salt substitutes". It doesn't taste anything approaching right, and if it turns out excess potassium is at least as harmful as excess sodium I won't be in the least surprised.

Meanwhile, it's not actually clear salt is genuinely a health problem, and only about 10% of the population is predisposed to high blood pressure as a result of increased salt intake.

Historically, I've had a savoury tooth, not a sweet one. This has served me well. Unfortunately, some complicated life events two years ago exposed me to far more sweet foods than I was used to — sugar is indeed addictive I'm trying to wean myself back off them.

From:

mtbc

I had been barely aware of potassium chloride's use as a salt substitute until

mst3kmoxie mentioned after reading this entry that there were such things. I shall have to keep an eye out for it in lists of ingredients. I guess its taste doesn't much bother me if I've not yet noticed it. But, then, I suppose I am mostly avoiding things that taste salty anyway.

I suppose we might naively expect potassium to do the opposite of what sodium does to us.

It may not be too long before we can get our free DNA sequencing that generates a good report of what we ought and oughtn't worry about. (Of course, companies offer this now, but I think it'll take more time before the reports can be good.)

Good luck with painlessly reducing the sweet stuff anyway! I find that finding some other distraction can help.

Edited Date: 2016-01-29 09:08 pm (UTC)

From:

gerald_duck

By my understanding, salt causing elevated blood pressure is a much less scary issue than people think.

If you're not predisposed to it, there's no problem. If you are, it can raise your blood pressure. But if you cut back on salt, it then drops again. The main risk is that the high blood pressure migth go undiagnosed.

If you eat bucketloads of salt all at once, you die.

The other potential risks from salt are scarier, but far from proven.

From:

mtbc

Thank you for the link! And, don't we have similar IP addresses? (-:

From:

gerald_duck

You tell me! :-p

You've set your journal to log IP addresses; I only log for anonymous comments. So you've seen my IP address and I've not seen yours…

From:

mtbc

Ah! I wondered how that worked. I'm 82.71.47.217. (This summer I plan to get around to getting the IPv6 working now they offer it but that needs a whole other level of thought about firewalling.)