The Dangers of Low Salt

The Dangers of Low Salt, by Randall D. Kittle

I grew up in a time era when eating meals together at home was the norm, and eating out a rarity. In those days before fast-food restaurants and pre-packaged processed food, salt wasn’t on everyone’s hit list for being bad or dangerous.

Quite the opposite, salt was considered a necessary staple for any kitchen, something used to tenderize and enhance the flavor of meat, and was even found as part of many a housewarming basket. No table was considered set for dinner without a salt shaker and no kitchen was thought to be complete without the Morton salt girl holding her yellow umbrella, and smiling at you from her blue cylindrical container.

To read some of the health news these days, you would think the Morton umbrella girl was an agent of sinister forces. These reports infer that salt and excess sodium are the bane of our diets and the blame for nearly all our health problems including heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and kidney disease just to name a few. “Low sodium” and “reduced salt” products crowd our grocery store shelves and offer to give us some “much needed” relief.

But recently, something happened that helps put things in perspective. My dad was in the hospital after injuring his hip. After a couple of days, he was feeling quite a bit better and wanted to go home. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be released because he had a problem with his sodium levels. They were too low! Yes you read that right; he was suffering from low sodium. Only after his sodium levels returned to the normal range would his doctor discharge him.

While excess salt in our diets can be a substantial health risk, salt is essential to life. We couldn’t live without it! I believe that’s one of the reasons God gave us taste buds for salt.

“Salt” is sodium chloride, and the sodium in it is an essential nutrient, a mineral the body cannot manufacture and so we must get it from our diet. Sodium is responsible for regulating our bodies’ water balance, and is necessary for the transmission of the electrical impulses of our nerves and muscles. Without salt, your brain could not think and your heart would not pump!

Unfortunately, I believe our society’s “salt” paranoia has rubbed off on the Church. We seem to be afraid of being the salt of the earth that Jesus has called us to be. While excessively rubbing salt in the wounds of our battered culture only hurt’s them and causes them to recoil, the Church must be the Church … and we are called to be salt. Just as salt is essential to our earthly lives, so too the lives of believers are critical to this world as they affect, influence, enhance, season and change it. The only way for our society to regain its health and wholesomeness is for each of us to seriously pick up the mantle we have been given … “You are the salt of the earth.”