The Salt Conundrum

F or millennia, salt has had an intimate history with human social, economic, and political relationships.In earlier times man's work value was paid in salt as gauged by body weight, social stature was dictated by assigned position at the table nearest to the salt, and its etymological root still remains in common parlance.1 Early last century, however, the relationship between salt intake and health was recognized. 2 Initially, this relationship was made with the association between magnitude of salt intake and hypertension; but more recently two achievements make a major impact on this subject, the quantitative measurement of dietary sodium intake and repeated recognition that the greater the daily sodium intake, the higher the prevalence of hypertension in populations.