Salt is a culturally accepted food additive, most people believe it's crucial to human health to consume salt, what if it's not? What if it's harmful to our health and well-being? 

What is salt? 

There's a difference between the white, crystal substance - that we sprinkle on our food to make it more tasty and enjoyable, and sodium and chloride naturally occurring in foods. 

Salt is a mineral, a rock, it's solid! Salt is about 40 % sodium and 60% chloride, and about 75 to 90 percent of the total sodium intake we get is derived from salt added unto our foods, the rest are acquired by eating fruits and vegetables with naturally occurring sodium. 

Why did I start to question salt? 

• High salt foods diets have been linked to kidney disease, gastric cancer, and WHO reports that the more sodiumis consumed, the less calium is absorbed, therefore a high sodium diet can cause calcium-related problems like osteoporosis. 
• It's a fact that excess sodium intakes force the body to retains more fluid. (Look at the video below)Which increases the amount of fluid pumped by the heart, requiring it to work harder putting the muscles under strain. It shrinks the arteries and results in high blood pressure. 
• The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders mentions 7 criteria's for something to be considered addictive, at least three of these needs to occur for something to be an addictive substance, salt matches four of them. 
• Try to give salt-water to a plant and see what happens (tip from @adamantine) 
• Anthropological studies have found that tribes initially displayed repulsion towards salt when first introduced to salty foods, but within days they were requesting the same, salty foods. 
• Salt acts as an appetite stimulant and encourages you to overeat. 
• Babies don't naturally desire salty foods (they go for the sweet food) 

Decrease or withdraw? 

It's fairly safe to say that an excessive salt intake is detrimental to optimal health and wellbeing. It is generally recommended to minimize the intake of salt since it causes a higher risk of health problems when people consume excessive amounts of salt. Through a lifetime of salt consumption we've been developing a taste for salt, raw nutrition expert Profesor Rozi Graham is someone that thinks this has perverted our tastebuds and our connection with the food itself. 

He further explains: 'When salt is consumed, it hits the tastebuds with a tremendous sensory impact resulting in disturbance to the nervous system. This leads to a craving for repeated jolts of intense sensory satisfaction...condiments excite the tastebuds and trigger false appetite, leading to overeating beyond the body's physical needs.'

Here are some of my own experiences after experimenting with a salt-free diet multiple times for over several months at a time.

Without salt:

• Fruits, leafy greens, and some nuts are the most appealing foods to eat. 
• Better hydration levels 
• Feeling more mentally and emotionally stable and generally experiencing better moods. 
• The food taste richer after a while without salt 
• healthier food choices because salt-cravings don't dominate them. 
• Seriously feeling similar to what I felt after quitting nicotine many years ago, just a sense of relief not being dependant on the substance. 
• No salt cravings whatsoever after around 2-3 weeks. 

Back on the salt-train: 

• Feeling the temptations of increasing the salt intake the longer I eat foods with salt 
• Observe that I crave salt while feeling challenging emotions, using it as a means to suppress my feelings, changing my state very instantly to being more emotionally numbed out. 
• Fruit got less and less compelling because it didn't have the same, punch as salty foods. 
• Putting on about 2 kilograms of water weight within the first three days. 
• Feeling more sluggish after meals and more mentally obsessed by food.  Eating more cooked foods and less of raw, fresh fruits and vegetables. 
• The food tastes different, I notice a lesser spectrum of flavours. 

“Salt is not a food, even in small amounts. …Stop putting acidic dirt into your body. The more salt we consume, the more we destroy and deteriorate our cells.” — Dr. Timothy Trader, NMD, PhD

Check out my friends salt-experiment on youtube!

5 Tips if you want to try a salt-free diet: 

1.  Time, time, and time. You've been addicted to salt for a long time, give your taste-buds and your addictive impulse to eat salt time and patience, and before you know it you'll taste the food even more, and you'll lose the impulse to eat salty foods after a few weeks.
2. Eat fruits and vegetables with high sodium levels in the starting phase transition off salt; tomatoes, cucumbers, coconut water and especially celery contains lots of sodium! 
3. Eat a raw, fruit-based diet, if you still eat cooked foods focus on vegetables, potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potatoes are my favorite cooked foods without salt. 
4. Some countries add iodine into the commercially sold salt, if you're not eating salt you should consider supplementing with iodine. 
5. Study the subject, quitting salt is not as simple as it might sound, learn more about it from people that is practicing a no-salt diet. 

Avoiding salt is just one of my ways to make sure that I only eat what my body and mind is getting nourished from, A salt-free diet works hand in hand with a raw, fruit-based diet. When you're not putting additives on your food, what you eat has to actually taste good in its natural form. Most unsalted cooked foods taste bland and don't even come close to the satisfaction and whole taste fruit gives you. By avoiding salt, I'm naturally drawn to my species-specific diet, and by avoiding cooked-foods I'm naturally drawn to a salt-free diet - Fruits and leafy greens are good as they are, there's no reason to chemically alter our natural foods with added salt, there's already sodium and chloride, organically in the fruits and vegetables - I can only talk from my own experience, but the difference between eating salt and not are huge! Would you like to give it a try?

DISCLAIMER: I'm not giving health advice, I'm only sharing information and my own experience.