But a drastic decrease in salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. Most people will benefit more from a diet of mostly unprocessed foods than from micromanaging their salt intake.
As an example, salt-sensitive hypertension is a condition which some people have, but most people don't. If you don't, then salt will generally not affect your blood pressure adversely (it will go up temporarily if you eat a whole Domino's pizza, but will quickly go down again).
https://nutritionfacts.org/audio/the-sodium-debate/
My take away from this and other sources is that we don’t have proper long-term, randomized, human trials to determine exactly what to say about this. At the same time, there are cases where a reduction is clearly helpful but no typical cases where an increase is beneficial.
I’m certainly not out to debate or disprove you here — I’d really like to eat more salt, but the evidence I come across doesn’t justify it. I’d rather be wrong, though.
> Some myths contain a grain of truth. Studies have associated excess salt with hypertension (high blood pressure),[54] kidney damage,[55] and an increased risk of cognitive decline.[56][5
The thing is, a lot of people have no idea that their salt intake is way too high. You’re right that the salt tends to come from processed foods, but the salt is still a problem.
I’m not trying to suggest the processed foods are not a problem, either. It’s a compounding problem, and it’s a massive one.