July 7, 2007

Excerpt from Bragg’s Healthy Heart Book — Chap­ter 12.

In our expe­di­tions over the world we have met many prim­i­tive tribes in the trop­ics that use no salt. And while they are not both­ered by the heat, salt-eating white peo­ple invari­ably com­plain about the hot weather. This seems to indi­cate that some com­mer­cial motive lies behind the eat more salt in hot weather cam­paign. Peo­ple undoubt­edly would not add inor­ganic salt to their food if they were never taught to do so in the first place. The taste for salt is an acquired one.The crav­ing for salt ceases a short time after it is elim­i­nated from the diet. It is only dur­ing the first few weeks after the use of table salt is dis­con­tin­ued that it is really missed. After the ini­tial period of absti­nence there is lit­tle dif­fi­culty. In fact, many of our health stu­dents who have bro­ken the deadly salt habit write us to say that now they can­not stand salted foods! When some­one serves them salted foods, it gives them an abnor­mal thirst for liquids!

What Table Salt Does to Your Stom­ach
An impor­tant objec­tion to table salt is the fact that it inter­feres with the nor­mal diges­tion of food. Pepsin, an enzyme found in the hydrochlo­ric acid of the stom­ach, is essen­tial for the diges­tion of pro­teins. Only 50% as much pepsin is secreted as would oth­er­wise be the case when salt is used. Obvi­ously the diges­tion of pro­tein foods will be incom­plete or too slow under such con­di­tions. The results are exces­sive putre­fac­tion of pro­tein, bloat­ing, gas and diges­tive dis­tress, which effects millions.

Sea Kelp is an Excel­lent Salt Sub­sti­tute. It’s a Tasty, Healthy, Organic Sodium.
Many out­stand­ing heart spe­cial­ists heartily endorse a no-salt diet. There are some excel­lent sea­son­ing sub­sti­tutes avail­able to sat­isfy an acquired crav­ing for salt. In the Bragg home we use sea kelp gran­u­lars, herbs, gar­lic, veg­etable sea­son­ings and Bragg Liq­uid Aminos. In our opin­ion, sea kelp is an ideal salt sub­sti­tute. It gives all foods — sal­ads, veg­eta­bles, etc. — a tangy taste as Bragg Aminos does. The Bragg Prod­ucts and sea kelp gran­u­lars (rich in folate, cal­cium and mag­ne­sium to build new blood cells) are avail­able at health food stores. Fresh and pow­dered gar­lic, lemon juice and Braggs organic, raw apple cider vine­gar are excel­lent sea­son­ers, also, Ital­ian and French herbs add deli­cious fla­vors to foods. Take a les­son from world famous French chefs! The mar­velous fla­vor of French dishes is achieved by the skill­ful use of gar­lic, onions, mush­rooms, herbs — not with salt! French cook­ing is called rich — but it’s a rich­ness of taste and not of con­tent. The best French chefs use very lit­tle fat and most use no salt at all!