I certainly don't expect to reach a consensus on salt because salt's role in the body is so complex. Even if we eliminate "junk" salt that has been iodized and anti-caked, even if we control for mined salt vs evaporated salt, even if we consider the rest of the diet and lifestyle, salt can either enhance or weaken biochemical processes in ways that differ for each body's landscape.
Whether we are starting new "salt" threads or dredging up old ones, the information is useless unless each person looks at their own body's salt cycle: ingested salt, circulating salt, and excreted salt. For example, too little circulating salt is often the cause of too little hydrochloric acid in the stomach, yet people often take hydrochloric acid supplements without correcting the salt deficiency.
I had an interesting experience during a hospitalization a few years ago, when the on-call doctor diagnosed me with hyponatremia (low level of salt in the blood) at the end of a week of hospital food. The medical treatment she prescribed was to limit water intake to slow down excreted salt. (LOL, get the irony here? Instead of giving me more ingested salt, they tried to slow down the excretion of salt.)
I am fussy about salt. I use it in a dietary way, not in a culinary (flavor enhancer) way. In some salty foods, the only significant flavoring is salt - as in chips or the little flavoring packets that come with ramen noodles. I like mined salt, evaporated salt, and black salt. I buy salt in a Korean market that carries an entire aisle of various kinds of salt. I believe that good salt helps my digestion function perfectly, helps me sleep better, and puts me in a better mood.
