SHOULD WE EAT SALT?

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 12615, 18 November 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHOULD WE EAT SALT?

We ought to give up eating salt, says Mr Leslie Wilson, the food and diet expert, in the London Magazine. The one broad principle he lays down is that man cannot digest any portions of the earth he treads j "between him and the possibility of assimilating minerals there is a wide gulf." It is true tliat man requires the mineral salts to keep him in health, but these minerals exist in abundance in the foods which Nature Seems to have intended for the eubsis-, tence of mankind. If we persist in" consuming these minerals in their raw state they can only bring us discomfort and dissatisfaction, for it is a law of Nature that man can only assimilate the mineral salts after they have gone through the process of vegetable growth and become living substances. These vitalised salts which we eat in fruits, vegetables, and in the flesh of grazing animals, undergo chemical changes in his blood arid become eventually part of the living tissues of his body. On the other hand, common table salt is never assimilated, and has no power to repair tissue waste. Common illustrations, such as the putting of meat in brine, prove that salt has great penetrative power through animal tissues; its use as a snow-melter and its effect on boot leather when so employed show that it weakens animal fibres ; its moistness in damp weather shows that it cttnuts water, while its application to raw flesh proves how strong a nerve irritant it is. The preservative quality bf salt on 'he waste tissues of the body, pre venting their elimination, is a slow, but a Sure process, resulting in the retention oi these salted tissues to form the tffound.wprk of many painful diseases. It 's interesting also to note that common salt, when excreted from the body by miy channel' is al'ways man unaltered state, thus showing it to be unaffected oy the process of digestion. But such talt, ip the course of its journey through tho body, has worked great havoc, for it has weakened the whole structure, making mombranes tough that were once .elastic.