God will be proven right, scientists wrong, about whether salt is good for you

[Enrique]

sez RW genius David Barton

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-science-will-eventually-discover-salt-not-bad-people-because-bible-says-so


And I'll make a speculation on this because I think the Bible is always right on science and science eventually does catch up, we're going to find out salt is not that bad a deal for you. There's a reason Jesus made salt a good thing, that we are the salt, we are the light, we're the preservative. Now anything taken too much is going to be a problem, but I have seen in the last two weeks new studies coming out saying well, it turns out salt is not as bad as we thought it was.

[ananda]

1. Well, maybe it'll have a placebo effect or something..

.. if you just believe strongly enough.

[RKP5637]

2. Yep, drink a cup of salt each morning, known to do wonders!

[formercia]

3. Should we bring up Darwin?

Last edited Sat Oct 13, 2012, 05:25 PM - Edit history (1)

jus' askin'

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. IIRC, salt didn't do Lot's wife a lot of good.

[pinboy3niner]

5. What's really da bomb...

...is being turned into a pillar of salt. You'd have to be a saint!

[Enrique]

7. maybe Barton is making a pro-sodomy argument

not that there would be anything wrong with that

[WCGreen]

26. Woah, there pinboy....

The chosen people don't believe in the whole saint thing. Only those who enjoy the full light of righteousness to get to be a saint.

The Jews of the old testament were more interested in Prophets than saints.

[theKed]

6. who is saying

Salt is bad for you?
It's kind of essential to, you know, live. Of course, inexcess, lots of things will kill you...

[Patiod]

8. Well, as someone who considers soy sauce a beverage

I have to agree with this person!

(Seriously, current science shows that salt is bad for some people who are salt sensitive but not for everyone. I have always had very low blood pressure and crave salt constantly. Other people react differently)

[Buns_of_Fire]

15. Salt sandwiches, anyone?

In my younger days, rather than dirty up a knife with peanut butter and/or jelly, I'd just take a slice of bread, sprinkle it liberally with salt, and slap another slice on top of it. I was happy with that and I'll still occasionally do it.

My tears can corrode metal.
I don't sweat, I crystallize.
And I'm probably going to croak before I finish this sentenc.....

[Enrique]

22. atta boy!

[Patiod]

24. My SO suggested that I just set up a salt lick at my desk

He's constantly harping on my salt intake (which doesn't include salt sandwiches, but does include salting the butter on my bread).

And yet, my BP has been 110/70 for 30 years (it sometimes dips to around 100/60), and his is >140/80 and creeping upward (I don't salt any food while cooking in order to keep HIS intake low).

[Ms. Toad]

21. I don't crave salt -

Since I am focusing on foods low in sodium I often have to add salt at the end of the day (because too low is also not good) - and I haven't missed it from a taste perspective. What I really miss is being able to eat normally. Nearly everything I don't prepare at home from fresh ingredients has way more hidden sodium in it than I realized. Panera - where I used to go weekly - one bowl of soup had all, or nearly all, the sodium I can have in an entire day now.

Personally, I'm hoping for a brain tumor - since the one it might be can be fixed with surgery. This Meniere's diet (and the prospect of being on it for the rest of my life, not to mention the prospect of losing my hearing and experiencing increasingly severe and frequent vertigo) really stinks.

[madmom]

27. My husband has Meniere's. He can tolerate a smidgen of salt, the thing he misses most

is caffeine, as in no coffee. He used to drink up-wards of a pot a day. Good luck with your diagnosis.

[Ms. Toad]

28. Is he actually tracking sodium by watching nutrition labels?

"smidgen of salt" is confusing me. I'm on a range of sodium diet - and am required to include at least 1000 mg/day (but not go over 1500). I've found foods tend to either have no sodium, or close to all I can consume in a single day in a single serving. Since I'm working on lowering sodium, I've found a few times that by the end of the day that I have to add an eighth of a teaspoon of salt to my last meal in order to avoid going under 1000 mg.

But - based on the things I've cut out, I know that if I were only adding a smidgen of salt (or not) from the salt shaker, without also tracking sodium by nutrition labels I would be well over the sodium cap each day. (Just eating a bowl of low fat chicken noodle soup at Panera leaves me with 120 mg of sodium for everything else I eat in the day).

I'm not on no caffeine - yet. I've done enough research to know that is a fairly standard recommendation. I drink lots of coffee, but I've been the subject of two science experiments by my daughter and off caffeine for 2 weeks at a time and know that being off it is tolerable.

How frequent/severe are his vertigo episodes?

[madmom]

29. He is not on a sodium diet as you are, was just told to cut out salt. I am the

one who reads the labels which isn't that hard for me because I have never liked it to start with. By smidgen I mean he can tolerate a handful of low sodium chips or nuts about once a week or so without a lot of trouble. The caffeine seemed to be his biggest problem.

His bouts of vertigo are not nearly as severe as the used to be but he gets then about daily, especially if the room is dark. His most severe was when he couldn't sit up in bed and was vomiting because everything was spinning. This is the one that took us to the ER and then to a specialist who did the diagnosis. He did have a surgery preformed on his inner ear, I'm not sure what it was called. It was done in the drs. office and involved a needle in his ear and that's all I wanted to know, lol.

Did you know you can receive disability for Meniere's?

[Ms. Toad]

31. Mine isn't that bad yet -

I've been been evaluated for hearing loss for a number of years, so I was already aware of the kinds of questions that go along with hearing loss so I reported in at the first sign of vertigo. So - down the road, I aware disability is an option - but I'm not there yet.

The surgery was likely an antibiotic that is used to kill the nerves that cause the vertigo - I've been reading up on all the possibilities

As for sodium - your hubby is still probably getting 2-3x what he should be for a Meniere's diet. There is so much sodium in everything that the amount we add (or consume in salty snacks) is a very small portion of our daily intake. I just ate a bag of salt & vinegar pop-chips since I know the rest of what I consume today will leave me under 1000 mg - and the amount of sodium in a 3-serving bag is still only half of what a bowl of chicken noodle soup (which does not taste salty to me at all) at Panera's contains. Sodium is really sneaky.

[madmom]

32. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I usually cook

from scratch mostly and don't add salt or very little. I'll start adding up sodium content just to see what he/we are getting.

[Ms. Toad]

33. Home cooking is a lot safer than eating out

But I have been surprised at the things which are high in sodium. For home cooking, celery won't put you over the limit - but I would have expected no sodium in it. (88 mg/cup)

I wish him well!

[TexasProgresive]

9. Here ya go, David Barton

Salt is not only good for you it is necessary for life, but like most things that are good for one it must be in moderation. Too much salt in the diet leads to health problems- just as too little will.

Water is good and necessary for life but it is possible to take in too much and die.

Some things are not good in any amount-cyanide, arsenic and small minded people like you, David Barton.

It is OK to have opinions but it is stupid to have uninformed opinions.

[tavernier]

10. Absolutely!

Especially if it's on the rim of a Marguarita glass.

[porphyrian]

11. Veruca Salt is bad for everyone. n/t

[magical thyme]

12. Oh FFS, your God was speaking to 1st century people who lived in the desert.

Spend some time in desert heat, you sweat a lot to stay cool. And drink a lot to stay hydrated, which means you also pee a lot. When you drink a lot, and pee and sweat a lot, you lose a lot of salt. And when you physically work hard in any warm environment, again you sweat a lot and drink a lot and pee a lot. So YES, if you live in the desert and live a physically demanding life, your body needs a lot of replacement salt.

And pre-refrigeration and freezer days, salt was a mainstay preservative because, except for the halophiles, most bacteria can't live or at least don't thrive and reproduce in it. So yes, salt is important to 1st century desert dwellers.

Fast forward to the today....we live in sedentary lives in a moderate climate. We may sweat a few minutes in a workout. We probably drink more than we need. But we don't need to immerse ourselves in salt. It's like anything else. Too little and you die. Too much and you die.

Science studies will go either way depending on which effects they are studying and how they study them. Too much salt is implicated in some diseases.

[exboyfil]

13. Is it too much for him to know

about the sodium potassium ion pump? Kind of like the most important physiological process in human cells?

My teenage daughters know about it especially my budding doctor who studied it with me at home.

[Enrique]

14. I enjoyed learning about that process

I feel a little sorry for people who rule out the possibility of learning, and for what? To hang onto stupid pointless ridiculous ideas from the Bible. The Bible is supposed to be about being good people and living a good life, wtf point is there in contemplating how Jesus felt about salt?

[exboyfil]

18. My older daughter is reading a biography about

Darwin that I recommended to her for her English class. The thing that finally set me over the edge in my church was The Truth Project in which they maligned Darwin in awful ways. If you think about the four plus years that he spent on The Beagle and the life that he dedicated to science, you have to just get sickened by the treament he received in that series.

I was basically alone as I tried to fight off all the garbage in history and science being promoted in the video series. I thought about going back for a round two when it was shown again, but I decided that what Jesus said about casting pearls before swine was applicable. I have better things to do with my time than debate these individuals.

[RagAss]

16. Yes....I endorse handfuls of salt for all rw fundy nutbags

[Indpndnt]

30. I was thinking a gallon/day, but handfuls will work.

To start. Jesus endorses it, after all. Are they all in or not?

[lynne]

17. Well, salt IS good for you. You'll die without it.

It's the too much of it that can be a problem.

[slackmaster]

19. I'm still ordering my Margaritas without the stuff

My doctor told me it's bad for me.

[SDjack]

20. If only the Bible had told us about vitamins -- that would have saved

a lot of lives. And, if the Bible had spent just a few sentences less on what foods not eat, and instead told us to wash our hands before eating, wow!, that would have been powerful. The ancient Israelis were so controlled by priests that they lagged the world in advancing science and engineering. So, as for me, I'll get my science from real scientists. When they are wrong, they go back to the drawing board to find out why.

[RebelOne]

23. I have high blood pressure, so I use low-sodium salt.

I love my salt and it goes into almost everything I eat other than ice cream.

[dionysus]

25. those people are fucked up in the head but salt in moderation isn't that bad for most people.

[daleo]

34. Using his own reasoning:

God was supposed to have turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. If God was so keen about salt, why would he have associated it with punishment for disobedience? It seems obvious from a biblical point of view that salt is actually evil. Surely a religious authority such as this fellow can see this.

And why is he reading 'scientific studies' at all? Clearly he lacks faith AND can't properly analyse scripture.