Unfortunately, yes, consuming excessive salt is probably a poor idea. With that said, for some of you, it may not be much of a concern. Context probably matters.
The majority of dietary sodium comes not in the form of added salt sprinkled on home-cooked meals, but rather processed foods (e.g. pre-packaged meals, crisps, processed meats, bread, etc.), especially those consumed outside the home (Anderson et al. 2010; Partearroyo et al. 2019). This does somewhat vary by culture, as up to 70% of dietary sodium among Chinese adults comes from added salt, whereas 95% comes from processed foods in the United Kingdom
(Anderson et al. 2010). Therefore, one would be wise to begin tidying up their diet by first limiting consumption of processed, pre-packaged foods in favour of more whole-foods as a starting point, as this is likely to account for a large proportion of your sodium intake unless you consciously add lots of salt during food preparation. Conversely, if you normally add lots of salt to recipes and to cooked meals, but don’t normally consume many processed foods, then this may be where you
start.
For an individual with a healthful diet already (e.g. plenty of fruits and vegetables, mostly whole foods, limited processed foods), reducing added salt to meals may not be necessary if they are in good health.
For example, an athlete with a very “clean” diet who makes an effort to avoid any salt could actually be compromising athletic performance by not intaking sufficient salt to replace losses during exercise, and hence adding salt to meals may be desirable. This is especially the case if someone is a heavy sweater and engages in heavy training.
But, if an individual with a seemingly healthful diet has already developed hypertension, it may be a wise choice to consider reducing added salt or swap out sea salt/table salt in favour of Lo-Salt, which has a greater potassium:sodium ratio.
Even if you have healthy blood pressure, high salt intake can still lead to microvascular dysfunction and/or may drive future elevations in blood pressure, with elevated risk in those who are more “salt-sensitive” (Barba et al. 2007; Marketou et al. 2019). The term “salt-sensitive” is a bit misleading in general, as it is not simply the case that you are packed into a neat category of “sensitive” or “resistant”. Yes, blood pressure responses to salt are
heterogeneous, but they lay on a spectrum as a continuous variable, and in an environment where high dietary salt is the norm, population guidelines on reducing salt intake make a lot of sense (Galletti and Strazzullo 2016).
Therefore, unless you have reason to believe you really need to be really driving your salt intake up, it’s probably wise to avoid doing so.
