To Salt or Not to Salt - That Is the Question
An Evidence-Based Position on Dietary Sodium Intake
From the essay
Two fundamentally different approaches to sodium guidance now coexist in the public domain. Sodium reduction lowers blood pressure, especially when baseline intake is high and/or the patient is hypertensive. Randomized trials, however, do not conclusively define the long-term optimal intake range for mortality and cardiovascular events. Several meta-analyses of prospective cohorts report that both low and high sodium intakes are associated with increased mortality. The relation between low sodium intake and mortality remains highly contentious. Optimal population health is achieved not by pushing sodium intake to the lowest possible value, but by avoiding both extremes.