Table salt is chemically sodium chloride. Sodium and chloride (actually the ions of sodium metal and chlorine gas) are essential elements required by humans to remain healthy. The main problem with salt is that people tend to eat too much of it and this causes an imbalance in the diet between sodium and potassium. While medical experts often claim that high intakes of salt in the diet can cause high blood pressure, this is not true for the general population. Salt can cause high blood pressure in a select few with a genetic predisposition, but generally high salt intakes result in high salt excretion rates, thus total retention of the salt is not increased. However, that is not to say that the high intake is not detrimental because a high salt diet is also a low potassium diet. Salt tends to be found in processed foods and potassium is found in fruits and vegetables. Therefore a high salt intake is indicative of a poor quality diet that is also low in fruit and vegetables, and this may be the real cause of the health conditions associated with salt.
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