"I'm Beautiful" > wrote in message
...
> My doctor says to watch my salt intake, so can i leave salt out of all
> my baking?
>
> www.yesterdayprices.FSCstore.com
>

I would think he meant for you to watch your sodium intake, unless he also
told you to avoid bananas as well (seriously).
Assuming you do not grab the salt shaker automatically every time you sit
down and that is why he told you to cut back, I would call the doc and ask
if he/she meant all salt, or if he/she meant just meant sodium chloride
(table) salt. They'll appraciate that you are taking the advice seriously
and acting on it.

If it is only the sodium in table salt that the doc wants to reduce, then
you can use "Lite" salt, which is a mix with potassium chloride and costs
just a few cents more, and works just as well.
I have used it since the late 70s and never had a problem using it
measure for measure.
----------
Background on table salt:

"Salt" is a name for a certain kinds of compounds using metals: copper
salts, iron salts, aluminum salts, sodium salts, potassium salts, calcium
salts, etc.

Common table salt is sodium chloride.
Lite salt is potassium chloride and sodium chloride, and
Salt substitute is usually potassium chloride.

Sodium chloride (stuff in the shaker) is an ionizing agent, which means when
it is added to water-based compounds, a few shared salt molecules makes
many H2O water molecule break into the ionized H and OH, (that form of
water, while still H2O, is known as hydrogen hydroxyl, the aggressive form
of water).
Salt is put in commercial soap to make the water more ionized and thus
active (it is usually that infamous "ionizing agents"), it can remove
certain other elements when water is hydroxyl like it does in water
softeners, and it lets water and nutrients penetrate organic cell walls
easier like when human cells and yeast cells get nutrients, etc.

You add salt to many recipes to assure that the water is as ionized as the
water can get, and that in turn lets rise times be fairly reliable, since:

Water can have several levels of ionization, depending on the amount and
type of contaminants.
De-ionized water is at one end of the scale, and totally ionized water
is at the other. The water we use is in between, depending on where we live
and our water source.
I understand that yeast will not grow hardly at all in deionized water,
and it has best growth in completely ionized water, and it starts dropping
off in growth again when the water starts getting way too much salt so that
it binds with the water and interferes with the yeast growth.

There is city water and well water. Well water has a lot more variation in
ionization than city water since not only can it have salts, it can have
buffers to ionization. So while either is somewhat ionized, usually neither
is fully ionized.

Bottom line is that one can do just fine without salt using some waters,
especially those that are very slightly salt contaminated by seawater like
many Florida city waters, while using some well waters will take three
times as long to rise yeast if you don't add a little ionizer (e.g., salt).

But water doesn't care if it is sodium chloride that ionizes, or potassium
chloride that ionizes. It ionizes for either. And its the excessive sodium
that apparently causes humans problems. So apparently reasonable use of
potassium salt is preferred.

Why avoid "salt"? In research, powers that be have found that as sodium
(part of common table salt ) goes up in the blood, so does blood pressure.
So if you lower sodium, blood pressure should then not rise.
(I might add that that at least one pharmaceutical mfgs study submitted
for their blood pressure pill also found that as calcium in the blood goes
down, blood pressure and sodium both go up)

Since sodium also is one of the two elements in the blood that separates
across a small membrane in the heart to synchronize beats, too much or too
little sodium in the blood might interfere with that beat control especially
if the mechanism for keeping the sodium balance in the blood, or the
membrane, is weak or damaged.
And just as too much salt interferes with growth in a brine, the
replacement of kidney and bladder cells can be hampered from having to
handle salt brine.
Since they usually really can't see to check if an individual has any
potential problem in those specific areas (they are not going to ask you to
eat a cup of salt to see how well you get rid of it), they make a learned
judgement on what they see and advise you to use caution and, because it can
cause small problems to become bigger problems in the age group, etc., to
limit salt.


fwiw