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Salt And Its Uses

Salt and Its Uses


As we know, salt is the most useful resource found on earth. In Ancient
Rome, salt was used as part of the salary to the soldiers. From this, we can
see that salt was as valuable as gold in the past.
In our daily life, besides making nutritious food more palatable, salt
is very useful in making bakery products, canned and frozen foods. Salt is a
good preservative that retards the growth of micro-organisms to make food
storage possible for a long period of timie before refrigeration.
Recently, an opinion that is harmful to our health was raised by Dr.
Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr,. former commissioner
of the U.S. Food and Drug
Admistration in 1981. The American Heart Dissociation, the American Medical
Association also joined the low-salt appeal. They believe that sodium salt is
connected with heart disease, circulator disorder, stroke and even early death.
By many doctors and researchers are now beginning to feel that salt has
gone too far. At the University of Alabama, a short-term research has been
done on 150 people on the effect of the intake of salt related to high blood
pressure. Result shows that those with normal blood pressure experience no
change at all when placed in a extremely low salt diet, or later when salt was
introduced, Of the hypertensive subjects, half of those on the low salt diet did
experience a drop in blood pressure, which returned to its previous leel when
salt was introduced.
Of course, these are other researcherswhgich tend to support the
findings. A small Indiana study showed that when normal individuals took large
amount of salt, the bolld pressure did not consistenly rise into the
hypertensive range. Also, study in Israel showed that a low-calorie diet could
reduce blood pressure without changing salt consumption. After viewing research
statistics, we should know that salt is not exactly harmful to us. In fact, our
bodies have a continual need for salt because our...