Are Salt and Sugar Bad ?
Starting with Salt.
On a WFPBD in just 7 days the average decrease in Blood Pressure was 7 systolic and 15 diastolic. ( systolic is the top number and diastolic is the bottom number ) On a low salt diet after months the average decrease was 1- 5 systolic and 0.6-3 diastolic.
In a 2011 Cochrane review ( highly regarded independent review source for medicine ) of 7major studies found no evidence of benefit from salt restriction.
Don’t blame the salt , blame the food. ( We will discuss how fat is BAD.) Many foods high in salt are also very high in fat: ie: Bacon 415mg sodium/100 cal, Cheese 404 mg sodium / 100 calories and Ham 830 mg sodium/100 cal.
So salt only bad in certain circumstances such as Congestive heart failure, renal disease, certain problems with edema and a few others.
A low fat WFPBD provides about 1100 mg /day which is well within the recommendations. So whether you believe salt is bad or not, you can see that you are in a good position on the WFPBD and that the WFPBD provides more benefits in areas that they are recommending the low salt diet for.
What about Sugar ??
Sugar is empty calories, which means it has no vitamins, minerals, or other beneficial nutrients found in most whole foods. There are a few studies that show that it may have some negative effects in other areas, but a lot of what people believe about it are wrong. This is especially true for Diabetes mellitus. Sugar consumption is not the problem in type 2 DM , it’s the Fat. Several studies support this.
Fat increases insulin resistance , sugar does not. So it is true that most type 2 Diabetics actually have more insulin in their blood than non- diabetics, but because of the fat that they eat and the fat on their bodies, the insulin does not work as well.
One professor fed his otherwise healthy student subjects a high fat diet for 3 days. Then they did a glucose tolerance test, which is a standard test for diabetes. At the end of the 3 days all of the students tested positive for Diabetes. Then after letting them recover, he fed them a really high simple sugar diet for 3 days. Again they did the glucose tolerance test. But this time none of the students tested positive for Diabetes. I will discuss more on fats in another topic.