PaleoPhil's Journal

[PaleoPhil]

I'm just posting my thoughts here for possible future further exploration. I don't want to spend the time researching it and providing supporting sources right now, sorry...

Paleo dieters argue incessantly over whether wild animals are lean or fatty. Those who say they're lean point to the fact that there is much less intramuscular fat in wild and grassfed animals (and I've witnessed this myself in every cut of meat and hunted kill I've ever seen) and there are lean seasons where even the fat depots are diminished. Those who say they're fatty focus on the fat depots, the fat levels during the fattiest times of the year when hunting would have been focused on, and the fact that all observed hunter gatherer societies preferred fat depots and fattier cuts like tongue to lean cuts and to the evidence that Stone Agers discarded lean portions of animals, perhaps during lean seasons (so as to get enough fat and/or avoid overdoing it on lean--there is some evidence that they tried to get 60% of calories as fat when possible).

There is truth on both sides. There are also unsupported extrapolations on both sides. The lean meat advocates appear to tend to assume that Stone Agers always or nearly always used the whole animal and didn't discard any of the lean. The evidence I've seen doesn't support this. The fatty meat advocates appear to tend to assume that if wild/pastured fat depots are healthy then intramuscular fat must also be healthy too. I have seen that muscle meat from feedlot animals is riddled with intramuscular fat and the suet depots are riddled with connective tissue and other gunk I can't even identify. The meat and fat of wild animals, which humans consumed for millions of years, does not have these characteristics. Introducing feedlot meat/fat into the human diet is a recent innovation and the burden of proof lies with those who claim it's just as healthy. We will probably never fully understand all the changes that feedlot feeding combined with generations of selection for neotenized animals has on the animals and on those humans who consume them, so that may be an impossible task. Some may decide that the added unknown risk is likely too small to discourage them from eating feedlot meats and fats, and that's their choice.

[miles]

How have your experiments with salt gone PaleoPhil? Do you still use it?

[PaleoPhil]

Sometimes. Not as much as I was for a while. I mainly use salt and pepper when I want to eat more or faster. Raw fermented honey also can serve the same purpose. I don't notice anything else in particular from salt other than its ability to spur the appetite and the fact that it can cause indigestion and mild nausea if I eat too much or a food has too high a level of salt.

[miles]

What types of salt have you tried?

[PaleoPhil]

French (Celtic) and American sea salt, kelp granules and Also Salt potassium chloride.

[alycia]

  I am so happy i just saw you have a journal!  I have read a couple of (pages 40-44) also read about eggs in your post on "best paleo for bowel health".  I am not sure how you eat your eggs?  i am sure uncooked but do you just eat the whole raw egg alone or do you consume it with other food to get better results?
thanks 
alycia

[PaleoPhil]

Howdy Alycia, I eat the raw eggs a few different ways:

1: usually just crack the shell and dump them into a big measuring cup or mug; usually discard the whites of one or more of the eggs--I don't like wasting, but I'm not thrilled by raw whites and I find I like them less over time, whereas most healthy foods I like more over time
2: sometimes I poke a hole in an eggshell and suck the egg out; I find it a somewhat inefficient method, but it saves dirtying a dish and it's a change of pace; sometimes I poke a hole in the shell and if it cracks I pull off a piece, which makes it easier to guzzle down
3: steak tartare - a yolk or two mixed with ground beef

[Löwenherz]

Paleo dieters argue incessantly over whether wild animals are lean or fatty. Those who say they're lean point to the fact that there is much less intramuscular fat in wild and grassfed animals (and I've witnessed this myself in every cut of meat and hunted kill I've ever seen) and there are lean seasons where even the fat depots are diminished.

This is indeed one of the most interesting questions in the whole paleo sphere, IMO.

Most wild animals are very lean and their meat never shows intramuscular fat. This high levels of intramuscular fat is something very new in our history of nutrtion and the question is if this fat can be healthy for us. I'm still skeptical. Fat is not fat. The differences can be huge. There are not many studies about intramuscular fats in meat. Loren Cordain once was convinced that this fat is extremely unhealthy. I don't know if this is still his opinion today.

BTW: Domesticated 100% grassfed ruminants can have huge (!) amounts of intramuscular fat! It all depends on the breed. For example: Some cuts of 100% grassfed Galloway are overloaded with intramuscular fat. The myth that grassfeeding means lean meat is repeated again and again. The breed is determining the fat distribution.

Let's think about a raw paleo vlc diet based on 100% wild meats. Here in Germany I would be totally dependent on wild boar. All other available wild animals don't deliver considerable amounts of fat, even wild ducks and pheasants I get from hunters are usually super lean. Wild boar would be the only source of animal fat beside seals at the coast (which are not allowed to hunt). Therefore it would be very interesting to analyse an Aurochs. Exactly this animal was hunted to extinction. Was it much fatter than deer and venison? But we can be very sure that there was only very little intramuscular fat in meat cuts.

How much fat has a real wild bison? Does anybody here know? Unfortunately wild bison is not available in Europe. Is the hump on the back full of edible fat?

Löwenherz

[miles]

How much fat has a real wild bison? Does anybody here know? Unfortunately wild bison is not available in Europe. Is the hump on the back full of edible fat?

There is wild Bison in europe, it's called Wisent.

[Löwenherz]

There is wild Bison in europe, it's called Wisent.

Yes, of course, I know that wisent is the european equivalent to us bison. Nevertheless meat of wild Wisents is not available in europe as far as I know. There are simply no really wild wisents left, with the exception of Bialowiska in Poland. But even there you can't meat from really wild Wisent. I have seen a report about a small population that is used for meat production, but these animals are kept on small, fenced grasslands and are fed grains.

Do you know any sources of wild wisent meat?

Löwenherz

[PaleoPhil]

BTW: Domesticated 100% grassfed ruminants can have huge (!) amounts of intramuscular fat! It all depends on the breed. For example: Some cuts of 100% grassfed Galloway are overloaded with intramuscular fat. The myth that grassfeeding means lean meat is repeated again and again. The breed is determining the fat distribution.

I don't know whether this is in response to what I wrote or not, but just to clarify what I meant, I meant grainfed vs. grassfed for the same breed of animal--in other words, all other things than the feed being equal. So, for example, a grassfed Galloway would probably have less intramuscular fat than a grainfed Galloway, though I haven't seen the meat of this breed myself. Have you seen the meat of grainfed vs. grassfed Galloway? It would be interesting to know how much difference there is and to see images of both, plus compare those to the meat of say wild water buffalo and grassfed and grainfed domesticated American bison.

What the ZIOH ZCers tend to ignore is that the wild animals of the Stone Age and today store most of their fat in depots rather than intramuscularly, yet the ZCers tend to not eat much of the fat depot fat and they claim that grainfed intramuscular fat is just as healthy, which seems like speculation. Even if there are studies on it, it's likely that we don't know all the differences. Nature is complex.

Another interesting tidbit is that today's obese moderners tend to have high levels of intramuscular fat, just like grainfed animals, and it's recognized as unhealthy in humans. So if humans with high levels of intramuscular fat are essentially sick, then it's also likely that fat grainfed animals are too. It seems like it would be healthier to eat healthy animals than to eat sick ones, though wild predators do like to eat sick wild animals (though that's not the same thing as sick domesticated animals), so it's a complex issue.

Another aspect of this is that any time that we humans muck around with nature we tend to screw things up in ways that we're often not even aware of for a long time. My bias is to not muck around with nature, as I don't consider myself smarter than nature or nature's God. That doesn't mean I believe in utopian notions of nature at the other extreme either, however, like the vegan myth of an original utopian tropical nonviolent lush-sugary-fruit-filled paradise.

Therefore it would be very interesting to analyse an Aurochs. Exactly this animal was hunted to extinction. Was it much fatter than deer and venison? But we can be very sure that there was only very little intramuscular fat in meat cuts.

Likely so on both those questions, but it would indeed be interesting to have live aurochs to analyze. Some are trying to re-breed them back into existence, but they will never be precisely the same as the originals, of course.

Ray Audette has written about the subject of levels of fat in Stone Age and wild animals and in traditional animal-food-rich diets over at the Paleofood archives (http://listserv.icors.org/ARCHIVES/PALEOFOOD.HTML).

Here are some examples:

Subject: Re: Paleo vs. Neanderthin
From: Ray Audette
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 01:26:19 -0600

To interpret what humans ate during Paleolithic times it is necessary to
understand the Pleistocene:

As Loren Cordain has pointed out, the primary game species of the
Pleistocene contined much more fat than even those domestic animals who have
been bred to express their Pleistocene DNA origins and store extra fat.
That the majority of large Pleistocene animals are extinct ( 60% of all
large mammal and bird species) makes it difficult to imagine the fat
available to those who inhabited their range.

This huge grassland covered a much larger portion of the earth than do the
dry grasslands of today.  Studies of pollen sediments indicate that trees
and woody stemed vegetables were much rarer than they are today and grew
much slower due to the lower concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
 according to glacier gas studies) .  Lush grasslands covered most of the
Earth now dominated by forrests.

Even in the dry grasslands of today the traditional people such as Plains
Indians, Tutsis and Mogols consume a diet that is far higher in fat than
even I consume.  In such places edible vegetables are rare and fruit trees
don't grow at all.  In such conditions one must consume at least 60% of
calories as fat to survive.  Stefansson also found these conditions in the
Arctic even though the Tundra is of too high a latitude to support abundant
grasses.  At lower latitude and CO2 levels even the berries that constitute
the entire Inuit vegatable food would be even more scarce and replaced by
grasses.  These lush grasslands would support far more high fat animals than
all the domestic animals that we produce today and we were evolved to
utalize this bounty.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin"


Subject: Re: Vitamin Philosophy (Re: Vitamin B12 experiences
From: Ray Audette
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:37:35 -0500

From: Amadeus Schmidt >
> ... I suppose that ice age animals *were* more fatty in northern
regions.

Do you mean like Texas (which was the home to many species of Pleistocene Megafauna) or southern Asia (likewise). Durring that time the weather in Texas was very similar to today in the summer (but with more rain).  Winter was brutal but very brief.

> Do *you* have any information of the fat of a
> horse, mammouth, sabbertooth tiger?

Cordain recently published an article showing how the megafauna were very high in fat.  He speculated that paleo man needed no vegetable suplementation as this fat represented over 60% of calories in these animals allowing most of it to be eaten without protein poisoning ( rabbit starvation).

> For this, the animals of an african savannah should be more
representative,
> and this represents the main timeframe of paleolithicum.

The steppe-tundra of the Pleistocene was far larger than the tropical savannahs of the time and contained far more animals.  Tropical regions shrunk as the temperate regions with their megafauna moved southward. Megafauna comprised over 60% of all large mammal species and far outnumbered any other species of the time.

Homo Sapiens are also Pleistocene Megafauna appearing only when the ice ages began about two million years ago to exploit the new game rich enviroment. During the warm interglacials ( about 10,000 years every 100,000 years) humans suffered as their hunting territories moved north to lattitudes where winters were less severe but considerably longer.

During the last mini-iceage (100-1400 AD), vikings living on Iceland had no vegetable foods at all and were granted a dispensation from the Pope to use dried fish as communion host.  From their remains it has been determined that they were far healthier during this time than before or since.


Subject: Re: beef
From: Ray Audette
Reply-To: Paleolithic Eating Support List <PALEOFOOD@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:26:13 -0700

Brian Glass wrote:
>but resorted to picking on beef.
> I have been unable to find any research that proves this to be wrong.
> Does anyone else know of any studies that do?
>  See Am. Heart Journal, April '62 for an article "Cardiovascular Studies
in the Samburu Tribe of Northern Kenya".  This tribe eats almost nothing
but meat and milk of cows.  Their average fat consumption was 60% of
calories!

It was found that they had very low cholesterol that it actually went
down with age. No heart disease was found.

Other later studies confirmed these results of an all beef diet in other
Tutsi tribes.

I think "Mogols" is a typo meant to be "Mongols." To balance out Ray's pro-meat bias a little, there are berries on the Mongol steppes and apple trees in the mountains in Western Mongolia, and I've seen a movie in which Chinggis Khaan eats berries. However, Ray does appear to be essentially correct that fruits do not play a big role in the Mongol diet.

Is the hump on the back full of edible fat?

Yes, someone reported here that the back fat of American bison tastes excellent.

[klowcarb]

What the ZIOH ZCers tend to ignore is that the wild animals of the Stone Age and today store most of their fat in depots rather than intramuscularly, yet the ZCers tend to not eat much of the fat depot fat and they claim that grainfed intramuscular fat is just as healthy, which seems like speculation. Even if there are studies on it, it's likely that we don't know all the differences. Nature is complex.

ZIOH is an embarrassment to me, a paleo, whole animal ZCer. In fact, I will refer to them as FZC, for frankenfood ZC.

[PaleoPhil]

Hi Katelyn,
It's unfortunate. There are some cool folks there still, though (AFAIK), like Del Fuego and his cute family. As long as at least one cool person remains, I will try not to give them all a negative label. It only takes one person (or black swan) to disprove a stereotype. I didn't even have any significant problems with CW, though I'm not into his way of eating or running a forum. To each their own.

I know you wouldn't approve, but I find I seem to tolerate raw fermented honey better than most fruits or cooked tubers for some reason and it even improves my skin. Rather surprising given how sensitive I am to other carbs. Apparently, it really does matter significantly what the specific form of the carb is and how it's processed. I can't overdo it, however, or it causes a buildup of gunk in my teeth, but interestingly, less so than unfermented raw honey. Also interestingly, Aajonus Vonderplanitz warns against eating too much fruit but is big on hand-packed raw honey, which nearly matches my experience (though I think he eats a lot more honey than I do and I don't think he eats it in a fermented form).

BTW, what's the brand of tanning product you use? Is it natural? It gives a natural appearance.

[Löwenherz]

I don't know whether this is in response to what I wrote or not, but just to clarify what I meant, I meant grainfed vs. grassfed for the same breed of animal--in other words, all other things than the feed being equal. So, for example, a grassfed Galloway would probably have less intramuscular fat than a grainfed Galloway, though I haven't seen the meat of this breed myself. Have you seen the meat of grainfed vs. grassfed Galloway? It would be interesting to know how much difference there is and to see images of both, plus compare those to the meat of say wild water buffalo and grassfed and grainfed domesticated American bison.

Ok, yes, you are right. 100% grass-fed Galloway is very fat. Grain-fed Galloway is even fatter! But the fat of the latter tastes disgusting. And I got very sick from it.

What the ZIOH ZCers tend to ignore is that the wild animals of the Stone Age and today store most of their fat in depots rather than intramuscularly, yet the ZCers tend to not eat much of the fat depot fat and they claim that grainfed intramuscular fat is just as healthy, which seems like speculation. Even if there are studies on it, it's likely that we don't know all the differences. Nature is complex.

Absolutely! Very interesting question. There is still not much information available.

Do you know what kind of diet is Ray Audette following nowadays? I have read his book many years ago. At that time he was recommending nuts for 'healthy' fats etc., if I remember correctly.

Löwenherz

[Löwenherz]

ZIOH is an embarrassment to me, a paleo, whole animal ZCer. In fact, I will refer to them as FZC, for frankenfood ZC.

Didn't you recommend grain-fed meat and organs recently?

Klowcarb, how can you be sure about grain-fed meat? I guess that you are on zc only a few years, right? So, no long-term experience... And in the case of toxins the effects usually become visible only after many years.

Löwenherz

[klowcarb]

Didn't you recommend grain-fed meat and organs recently?

Klowcarb, how can you be sure about grain-fed meat? I guess that you are on zc only a few years, right? So, no long-term experience... And in the case of toxins the effects usually become visible only after many years.

Löwenherz

ZIOH ZC is not grainfed meat and organs.  It is ENTIRELY grainfed meat, Wal-Mart meat, tons of processed and well-done meat, and organs are shunned. I was suggesting having grainfed organs over NO organs. I eat grassfed beef, but I'm not going out of my way to find grassfed organs if they are not available. I eat tons of eggs, so while I buy good eggs, no way am I paying for pastured eggs because I eat as many as 4-12 a day and that would not be money well spent. I go for nutrient density over fears of something not being pastured or grassfed entirely.

You, Lowenherz, are ASSUMING that any grainfed meat has toxins in it. That is unfounded.

[klowcarb]

Phil, all the cool people have left ZIOH. Who is left, really? I sometimes read over there and laugh. All they talk about is dead pemmican, Wal-Mart chuck rolls and how awful offal is .  I am so glad I left. If you think Del Fuego is cool for feeding his kids only dehydrated meat and making sure they never socialize with other children, I'm scared  .

I wish I could trap you, Phil, and get you over your obsession with "needing" something other than animal foods. You are never satisfied. You admit that you feel best eating animal foods only, yet you keep experimenting with fruit, vegetables, tubers, honey. Ask yourself why? You saw my pictures, right? You see that I can build muscle while being effortlessly lean (15% for a woman--that is in the LOW END of the ATHLETIC range!) on a highly nutrient dense ZC WOE. I am so happy eating this way. I never yearn for honey or fruit...why? They make me hungry, and just have sugar with maybe a trace amount of Vitamin C or potassium. Not worth it IMO. And since you don't need to eat multiple times a day like SAD eaters, you can socialize without eating. Very easy. I don't understand your not being satisfied.

[Löwenherz]

You, Lowenherz, are ASSUMING that any grainfed meat has toxins in it. That is unfounded.

I said that grainfed meat CAN be VERY unhealthy.

It's very naive to believe that humans can thrive long-term on meats from diseased animals.

And BTW: I got really sick from grainfed meat and needed years to recover from all the serious inflammations in my GI tract. I never got problems from 100% grassfed meat.

Best wishes

Löwenherz

[klowcarb]

I'm sorry you got so sick. But I would still pick a grainfed RUMINANT steak, probably lean, and supplement with grassfed butter or coconut oil if I did not have access to grassfed meat. I would do this over not eating meat at all--really stupid--or eating a bunch of fruit and vegetables.

You also assume grainfed = diseased. I do not buy your premise.

[PaleoPhil]

If you think Del Fuego is cool for feeding his kids only dehydrated meat and making sure they never socialize with other children, I'm scared  .

When I was reading that forum he posted about eating organs and other stuff on occasion. Is he back to eating just pemmican? I didn't know he doesn't let his kids socialize. Why does he do that, do you know? I guess it's his kids that are most remarkable, really. They have cute chubby cheeks and big smiles and always seem happy and silly. Some of the happiest kids I've ever seen, actually, along with my Paleo nephews. I do wonder whether they're getting enough nutrients for the long term, especially if they're never eating organs.

I wish I could trap you, Phil, and get you over your obsession with "needing" something other than animal foods.

Huh? You don't like Del Fuego's eating just pemmican and yet you also don't like that I've added back some other foods I found I can handle? I agree that pemmican or raw meat and fat alone is not enough in the long run, which is one reason why I've worked on finding what other foods I can add to the foundation of meat and fat, starting with eggs and organs early on after I had been on the meat/fat base elimination diet for a few months and my improvements plateaued. Ironically, all the folks I know in the real world who know what I eat think I should add more foods, not subtract some.

You are never satisfied.

I can't prove a negative, so I won't bother.

You admit that you feel best eating animal foods only

Yeah, the key word is "feel." I get the best euphoria when I eat raw meat and lots of raw fat, but too much of the meat worsens my chronic C and I tend to lose weight, which were additional incentives to see what other foods I could add, and so far it has helped. Hooray! Interestingly, IIRC, Matt Stone reported that he experienced the euphoria too, but also experienced underweight and other problems until he started adding other foods back. KGH also reported that he didn't have the energy to do hard manual work until he added some carbs. Tyler and plenty of other folks have reported similar things. Unlike the LC haters, I do also recognize that some people have done great with little or no carb intake and I don't find it to be a necessity to eat plants and honey for the carbs, they just happen to be softer and easier to digest than meats and fish. And like Lex I'm not wedded to any single way of doing things, so if things don't go well I adjust as necessary. I don't understand why I should see things as some sort of war between LC and higher carb.

You saw my pictures, right? You see that I can build muscle while being effortlessly lean (15% for a woman--that is in the LOW END of the ATHLETIC range!) on a highly nutrient dense ZC WOE. I am so happy eating this way.

Yeah, congrats again! I'm so happy for you. You really showed those ZIOH folks that you could succeed without their psychoanalyzing.

I never yearn for honey or fruit...why? They make me hungry,

That's one reason I eat them--they improve my appetite and enable me to eat more to keep my weight up. I agree that folks who are trying to lose body fat would be wise to be careful with those foods. After all, they are used by bears to put on body fat during the summer and early fall as preparation for the winter hibernation.

I don't understand your not being satisfied.

I'm just finding what works for me. The ZC/VLCers think I eat too much plant foods and carbs and the tropical fruit utopians think I eat too little. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't, so I don't bother trying to please others and was never big on seeking others' approval anyway. I'm more of a maverick free thinker.

It's good to have near-ZCers like you and Lex PLUS carb promoters like Tyler and others here at the same forum so I can get input and feedback from both sides. When one only gets one side of the story, it can be misleading.

BTW, don't you find it fascinating that someone like me who has such problems with most carbs actually gets benefits from raw fermented honey and isn't it an interesting coincidence that honeycomb/grubcomb is the favorite food of hunter-gatherers who have access to it and that studies of honey have shown it to be paradoxically healthy, rather than harmful like refined sugars, puzzling the scientists? I wonder what would account for raw fermented honey benefiting me, when cooked tubers and many fruits give me problems, whereas other folks say they benefit from cooked tubers? I'm of Irish heritage and I had read about HGs eating cooked tubers, so when I learned that most Paleo dieters didn't consider them Paleo I was surprised, but I gave elimination of them a try and did experience benefits and adding back occasional cooked tubers didn't go that great--though, interestingly, I haven't noticed any problems from raw soaked sweet potatoes yet (though that could theoretically just be that I don't digest them well enough for them to have a significant negative effect, so that they just pass through me). Do you think the problem is mainly the cooking, like Tyler would probably say?

Do you think it would make sense for honey, the favorite natural food of humans (which HG's and even chimps gather with amazing ease and alacrity and appear astoundingly impervious to the stings they get, BTW) to be poison? Nature is interestingly mysterious at times. "She" seems to enjoy derailing scientists' theories at nearly every turn. It would seem that in my case the "it's all about carbs" and "all sugars are the same" mantras may not hold, as well as the "artery-clogging saturated fast" mantra. I find it hard to believe that reasonable quantities of raw honey or raw saturated animal fat would be seriously harmful to most reasonably healthy humans, despite the scientific consensus believing them to be so. Of course, if they give me problems, I will adjust as necessary.

Thanks for the post, you rarely fail to give me a chuckle or at least a smile, which I appreciate.

[klowcarb]

Thanks for the post, you rarely fail to give me a chuckle or at least a smile, which I appreciate.

You know I loooooooove you, Phil  . I just felt that your earlier posts read like, "I feel best eating X, but I want to try Y, Z, A, B" and they kept failing. I didn't see why you kept seeking. I'm glad you are eating mostly animal fats and proteins, and if the small amount of honey works to increase your appetite so you do not lose too much weight, I am happy. Has it helped with the constipation? I know that was one issue that you could not resolve.

Thanks for the sweet compliments, my friend! 

[PaleoPhil]

It's not so much one thing that helps with the constipation it seems as keeping the overall diet soft and easy to digest. If I eat too much meat I get more constipated, whereas raw eggs, avocado, raw fermented honey, bone marrow, lard and berries seem to be sufficiently soft, easy to digest and fatty to promote good bowels and sufficiently tasty and calorie dense to keep the weight up. I try not to overdo it on the carbs, though, to minimize dental issues and keep more of that level of well being. It's a balancing act. Interestingly, since eating the raw fermented honey I seem to be handling carbs better, and I already had experienced some small improvement in handling carbs since trying raw ZC--almost the opposite of what a lot of folks apparently experience--and finding the carbs that give me the least problems. I think it may be because I'm experiencing some sort of healing, plus maybe antifungal and probiotic effects? I can only guess.

By funny coincidence, my best friend was telling me again tonight that I should eat MORE fruits, not less, and she was appalled when I told her that you were encouraging me to eat less of them. I get it from both sides.

[Löwenherz]

...But I would still pick a grainfed RUMINANT steak, probably lean, and supplement with grassfed butter or coconut oil if I did not have access to grassfed meat.

Agreed. That would be the second best option.

The fat from grainfed animals is the most critical part...

Löwenherz

[klowcarb]

I find I go more regularly with more salt in my diet. It has the plus that as an athlete I need more salt, and it is good for adrenals. I only eat one meal a day, so I add a lot of salt to it.

[PaleoPhil]

Ah, you're a fine lass, Katelyn. Thanks for reminding me that I haven't been eating added salt lately. This is the sort of thing that forums are useful for and make them worth putting up with the criticisms, insults, false assumptions, straw men and dogma so common in most diet/health forums (no reflection on your posts which I know are always well intentioned and quite welcome). I was found to have low urinary sodium level and a chiropractor diagnosed me as having adrenal fatigue, though it is a non-clinical diagnosis. I also have a tendency towards unusually low blood pressure--especially in my youth, which is another potential sign of salt deficiency and adrenal fatigue/insufficiency. Plus, I used to love salt in my youth and add it to already salty foods and my grandfather used to do the same, pouring salt onto most of his foods and we both looked like JFK in his skinny youth before he started taking cortisone and filled out as a result (JFK had clinical Addison's disease). Plus, you're right that salt can help with constipation. Salt can also help with digestion by creating HCL. It's so rare to see anyone recommend salt that I tend to forget about it.

BTW, in case anyone cares, I'm not seeking perfection, just hoping to resolve health abnormalities. I'm not looking to become a bronzed Adonis or any such nonsense. For one thing, with my genetics, achieving Adonishood is extremely unrealistic. Nearly-normal would be fine with me. Not that saying this would necessarily convince anyone who has preconceived notions about me stuck in their brain, but I suppose not clarifying this might lead to others getting false impressions.