How much salt should you eat?

Judy ChoBCHN, FNTP · board-certified holistic nutritionist and functional nutritional therapy practitioner; no clinical licence recorded

More than you think. Roughly 1 to 3 teaspoons of salt a day, titrated by energy and swelling, and more again if you eat meat-based or ketogenic.

What it rests onHer stated grounds: a pound of meat carries only about 400 mg of sodium, so a meat-based diet undersupplies it; below about 500 mg of sodium a day she says you risk insulin resistance and rising aldosterone; chloride is needed to make stomach acid; and she cites work showing higher risk of heart disease and premature death below 3 g of sodium a day than at 4 to 5 g. She publishes a titration rule (start at 1 teaspoon, find the level that gives more energy without swelling) and gives 2 to 5 teaspoons as what meat-based and ketogenic eaters typically use. The insulin-resistance argument is sourced on the page to her own book, which could not be read.

Michael GregerMD · founder, NutritionFacts.org

Less. Cut about half a teaspoon of salt a day, and aim under the guideline targets.

What it rests onHe cites modelling in which cutting salt intake by half a teaspoon a day 'might prevent 22% of stroke deaths, and 16% of fatal heart attacks', and reports the US Dietary Guidelines target of under 2,300 mg a day and the American Heart Association's under 1,500 mg. His practical argument is structural rather than individual: about 75 percent of dietary salt comes from processed food, which he says makes the individual salt-shaker approach impractical, and among adults aged 20 to 50 the largest single source is chicken.

Dariush MozaffarianMD, DrPH · cardiologist and nutrition epidemiologist, Tufts

No more than about 2,000 mg of sodium a day. Most of it is added by manufacturers before food reaches a kitchen, so this is a reformulation problem as much as a personal one.

What it rests onHis dietary priorities table lists sodium in the consume-less column at no more than 2000 mg/d, and his comparative risk assessment makes high sodium the largest of ten dietary factors, associated with an estimated 9.5 percent of US cardiometabolic deaths. He is not claiming the number is settled: his own concordance table in the same review files the harms of HIGH sodium under broad concordance but the harms of MODERATE sodium one column over, under general concordance with some remaining controversy.

Stephen D. PhinneyMD, PhD · physician-scientist; co-founder and former Chief Medical Officer, Virta Health

While you are in sustained nutritional ketosis, take in about 5 grams of sodium a day, roughly 3 from food and 2 from broth or bouillon.

What it rests onHe argues that nutritional ketosis raises renal sodium excretion, so sodium needs rise above what standard low-salt guidance assumes, and that the resulting depletion drives the compensatory hormonal response people call keto flu. He states an explicit carve-out in the same article: people with high blood pressure or fluid retention that persists after keto-adaptation, particularly on a diuretic, should not go above 3 grams a day until those are resolved.