"For the first 90% of our evolution, we ate diets containing less than a quarter teaspoon of salt a day, because for the first 90% of our evolution, we ate mostly plants. We went millions of years without salt shakers, and so our bodies evolved into salt-conserving machines, which served us well — until we discovered salt could be used to preserve foods. Without refrigeration, this was a big boon to human civilization. Of course, this may have led to a general rise in blood pressure, but who cares if the alternative is starving to death because all your food rotted away? But where does that leave us now, when we no longer have to live off of pickles and jerky? We are genetically programmed to eat ten times less salt than we do now."

"Salt does all sorts of bad things to our arteries besides just raising blood pressure, contributing to the deaths of about 150,000 Americans every year. So try to keep sodium intake under about 1500mg a day."

Another important, albeit frequently ignored, issue in the modern Mediterranean diet is sodium intake. Despite evidence linking salt intake to high blood pressure, heart disease, and strokes, dietary salt intake in the U.S. is on the rise. Right now we get about seven to ten grams a day, mostly from processed foods. If we were to decrease that just by three grams, which is about 1,000 mg of sodium, half a teaspoon of table salt, every year we could save tens of thousands of people from having a heart attack, prevent tens of thousands of strokes, and tens of thousands of deaths. There is a common misconception that only certain people should reduce their salt intake, and that for the vast majority of the population, salt reduction is unnecessary. But in reality, the opposite is true.