When I first dined in a US restaurant, I was a little bit puzzled by the two bottles on the table. It was kind of embarrassing to ask the waitress about them, but my wife and I quickly figured them out. They must be some sort of condiments. I tasted them. One is salt, and the other is pepper.

I saw a lot of people spread salt and pepper on their dishes, but to me, the US foods are already salty. Then I understood why there are so many research examining this salt issue. We need about 2 grams of salt per day, approximately one teaspoon. But regular folks like you and me are consuming 4-5 grams per day, more than double of the amount that USDA recommended.

In the US, from fast foods to homemade dishes, people just add too much salt. A simple McDonald’s hamburger, for example, can give you 530mg sodium, and a medium pack of French fries contains 220mg sodium. It is almost half of your daily allowance, and you just eat one moderate amount of foods. One big-Mac or a double hamburger with a large pack of French fries would easily cost you all sodium allowance.

Salt is not only a flavor but also a preserver. Cucumbers and cabbages can be salted and pepperized to make pickles and kimchi. Meat and fish can also be salted to create a unique salty flavor. All canned foods, vegetables and meat alike, are salted. In the grocery store, I can’t find a sausage or ham with sodium less than 15%. Even worse, regular fresh meat is also slightly salted to be better preserved. Among all kid’s junk foods, a sodium level of 20-23% is considered low salt. But you can still taste the salt in there. Everything, if you count cooking process, is salted.

Salt, chemically named as sodium chloride, is an essential macro-mineral. Sodium in our body can maintain cell electric potentials and sustain nerve activity. There are sodium-hydrogen pumps in almost all cells. Cells, from the very beginning, rely on sodium to survive.

So human, like all animals, craves for salt. If not making modern people worse, our human kidney tends to preserve sodium while excreting potassium, another essential electrolyte.

The most important health risk of high salt intake is high blood pressure. Clinical trials such as Trials of Hypertension Prevention (TOHP) and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH)-Sodium feeding study have clearly showed that reducing salt can lower blood pressure, even if the blood pressure is only slightly elevated (high normal blood pressure). They showed that a 40% of salt reduction in our daily diet is feasible and beneficial to health. But the problem, it seems to me, is that high salt intake is a diehard bad habit.

No example is better than one’s personal experience. I was born in the east coast of China where salt intake is relatively lower than those northern and western Chinese. My hometown cuisine is famous for its low salt taste and sweetness (yes, I know sweet is not good). When I visited my wife’s hometown, I complained about the salty taste of their foods. But when my mother-in-law visited me, she complained that I put too little salt in the dishes. However, after a week or so, she gradually changed her taste and appreciated my low salt dishes. The trouble is that she switched back to high salt diet right after she went back to her home.

I even conducted an experiment by myself. For more than two weeks in a row, I didn’t put any salt into soup. I have to admit that it was tasted too plain but was tolerable. I think I reduced at least half of my salt intake because I maintained and even reduced salt in other dishes as well. The experiment ended when my wife decided to add a little salt in the soup to improve its taste. Nevertheless, now all people visiting us agree that our dishes are not salty.

I also convinced my parents that too much salt is not good since my mother has high blood pressure. Now they don’t put salt into soup any more. Together with exercise and a simple drug at low dose, my mother’s blood pressure is under control. She seldom experiences headache or fuzzy mind.

Cutting salt intake is hard. You need to eat more fresh vegetables and cook low salt foods instead of buying a lot of canned foods and junk foods (those pre-processed foods, including fast foods, may account for 80% of total salt intake). But the living expense will certainly go up. And you have to spend more time in the kitchen. I know, a lot of people hate kitchen. That’s why Rachael Ray’s 30 minutes dish gets popular.

Speaking of Rachael Ray, her old cooking method should not be recommended in terms of salt intake. She used a lot of canned foods which have high salt content. She always spread some salt on her dish which is not a healthy habit either. Fortunately, Rachael listened to her critics. In her new 30 minutes series, she used more fresh foods and stopped spreading salt everywhere. Nevertheless, I like Rachael. She is a charismatic woman.

Salt is not a bad thing. We need salt. But we should also pay more attention to salt intake. Enough is enough. Don’t go too far. That’s it.