How To Reduce Salt When You Enjoy Salt

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❝Trying to cut down salt to improve blood pressure, but it just results in sad meals, any advice?❞

Good news: there are quite a few angles from which to approach this!

Firstly, you might know that cutting down on sodium, while a worthy pursuit for most people in the industrialized world, isn’t the only way to improve your blood pressure.

See for example: Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt

But, let’s say we’re cutting down on sodium, and we will say “sodium” rather than “salt” here, since for example a good and sensible substitution is potassium chloride, which is also a salt (and yes it is also salty to the taste), but does not contain sodium.

Learn more: Why the WHO has recommended switching to a healthier salt alternative ← notably, most commercial “low-sodium salt” products are a mixture of sodium chloride cut with potassium chloride. Check the labels when shopping, as some have better ratios of potassium:sodium than others (more potassium is better; less sodium is better).

Another substitution option is monosodium glutamate (MSG) which, as you may gather from the name, does contain sodium, but it has about ⅓ of the sodium content of sodium chloride, i.e. “regular table salt”.

Learn more: MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison ← here be chemistry

See also: Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier?

For those wary of MSG, please disregard the popular myths, which are simply untrue: Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?

You might also wonder about pink Himalayan rock salt. Its imperfections do make it beautiful, but it is still almost entirely sodium chloride, and as such, contains just as much sodium as regular table salt.

There are more things you can do than just substitutions, though.

For example, most of most people’s sodium intake comes not from added salt in cooking or at the table, but rather from ultraprocessed foods (see How Likely Is It That Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) Will Kill You?). So cutting down on those can do a lot of good even if you’re using salt in your own cooking!

Further, if (like this writer) you enjoy strong flavors, feel free to go heavy on other seasonings that can fulfil a similar culinary role. For example, garlic granules (great on pasta and potatoes) and coarse ground black pepper (what isn’t it great on?) are very worthy options, as is dried sumac (great in salads). Despite not even tasting salty and therefore definitionally not being salt-substitutes, they nevertheless elicit some comparable gustatory reactions, depending on the food of course.

Finally, what if for whatever reason you do have a sodium-heavy meal once in a while?

We’re not going to say “once in a while won’t hurt you”, because sodium raises blood pressure acutely (i.e., in the moment) so once in a while could in fact kill you if your general cardiovascular health is poor.

But, if you’re just on the cusp of healthy blood pressure want to tip it a bit lower, then if you do have a salty meal once in a while, then here are some things you might want to bear in mind:

Sodium raises blood pressure because of what it does to our electrolyte balance and how it resultantly affects other aspects of homeostasis (such as osmotic gradients and intracellular pressure and so forth and, yes, blood volume and therefore blood pressure).

This means that if you do get too much sodium, that can be mitigated at least somewhat by:

• Drinking more water (but still no more than 1L per hour, please, as your kidneys can’t process more than that and then you’ll have extra problems including, paradoxically, even higher blood pressure)
• Peeing more (goodbye, sodium)
• Taking potassium (this is one where supplements are more useful, because if you’ve just eaten a big salty meal, you’re probably not ready eating an entire fruit bowl)

The potassium thing works because, to oversimplify it a little, it has some opposite functions to sodium and will help balance things out.

Learn more: Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Potassium

Want to learn more?

For 94 low-sodium recipes (which are also heart-healthy in other ways too), consider:

The End of Heart Disease – by Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Enjoy!