Question

I have heard of generally people taking in more than enough salt. There was a while when I did not add salt to my food, and I quite got used to it. But one of my friends said that it might not be healthy. So I changed to add a little salt, but only during my breakfast.

For more information,

almost all my meals are prepared by me. my daily meals usually include spaghetti, brown rice, meat( frozen seafish fillet such as whiting, chicken), various vegetables (carrots, kale, mustard, collard, tomatoes, mushroom, asparagus, broccoli, ginger, garlic). No others besides meals, except, fruits (one or two banana, orange, apple) and yogurt.
I am a student. I am not very active in exercise, usually no more than once a week and usually busy without once at all, although I hope this can be changed one day.

My questions are:

If living without adding salt explicitly, will my diet supply all necessary nutrition? If yes, how much shall I eat?
If adding salt is necessary, how much and when to add it will be fine?

Answer 1

If you over- or underconsume salt, the part that is most likely to cause health problems is sodium. According to the USDA ^[1], 1.5 grams/day of sodium is adequate for adults under 50 years old. For adults over 50, it's 1.2-1.3 g/d. They also say that 2.3 g/d is the tolerable upper intake level for adults of all ages. These numbers usually have a generous margin of safety.

If you look up the nutrition facts ^[2] for the foods you listed, none of them contain much sodium, so you probably don't need to cut salt out of your cooking. That said, sodium can come from unexpected places, such as sauces, soups, spreads, and cheese, so you could be racking up salt without even realizing it. If you want to see how your sodium stacks up track everything you eat on a site like Livestrong ^[3] for a week or so and see what your average daily intake is.

[1] http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=4&tax_level=3&tax_subject=256&topic_id=1342&level3_id=5140
[2] http://nutritiondata.self.com/
[3] http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/

Answer 2

The chemical composition of table salt is sodium chloride. Sodium and chloride are two very important electrolytes ^[1] our body uses. Intake of sodium (found inside your cells) and chlorine (found outside your cells) helps maintain the balance of fluids in your cells.

-If you are making food from scratch and "living without salt explicitly", you can add salt to taste. Meat, seafood, fruits, etc. naturally have salt. See this site ^[2] for the salt value in foods. If you are buying say spaghetti sauce from the jar, it will most likely already have salt in there. Check the nutritional labels to log for your daily intake.

Sodium: How much do you need? According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans:

Don't exceed 2,300 mg of sodium a day if you're a healthy adult. Don't exceed 1,500 mg of sodium a day if you have high blood pressure, kidney disease or diabetes; you are black; or you're middle-aged or older. Keep in mind that these are upper limits, and less is usually best, especially if you're sensitive to the effects of sodium. If you aren't sure how much sodium your diet should include, talk to your doctor. From the MayoClinic ^[3]

It sounds like you have a pretty healthy diet since you prepare most of your meals. Fast food, overprocessed food, and food with a lot of preservatives (i.e. frozen dinners) will have the highest in sodium.

[1] http://www.medicinenet.com/electrolytes/article.htm
[2] http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/info/books-phds/books/foodfacts/html/data/data5a.html
[3] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sodium/NU00284