THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SALT AND SODIUM

Did you know?

Sodium is not salt.

It’s a common and easy enough error to make, however the two are not equivalent and shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

If you cast your mind back to the periodic table you learned about in chemistry at school, you may remember that salt (NaCl) is made up of 2 elements: sodium chloride, salt’s chemical name. Sodium makes up around 38-40% of salt, the remainder is chloride. 

The reason we’re telling you this is that nutritional advice about salt often uses guidelines on how much sodium you need in order to be healthy.

We need sodium for ensuring adequate blood volume so that our tissues receive sufficient oxygen-carrying blood and nutrients, for controlling blood pressure and for optimal nerve function.

We know from this study and another study that too little sodium is dangerous for heart health and too much is around 8g of sodium.  The Goldilocks amount that offers the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease appears to be around 5g of sodium per day. That’s 12,5g of salt.  How did we figure that out?

Remember we said sodium forms approximately 38-40% of salt. Let’s go with 40%.  If you take the weight of salt – say 10g – and multiply by 40%, you’ll get sodium of 4g.  Going the other way from sodium to salt, multiply by 2.5.  eg: if we want to be sure of consuming 5g of sodium, then multiply by 2,5 to get 12,5g salt.

Next time you read recommended dietary guidelines for consuming salt, check if they’re saying sodium or salt.  You now know the difference. We’ve adapted this snippet from Mark Myerson’s excellent article Is Salt Bad For You? Or go here to read it on the original website.