[conspire] attempting polite request to keep sodium levels down

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Dire Red (deirdre at deirdre.net):

> We do plan to meet on the 12th.
> 
> Just to address the salt point, Rick generally doesn't add salt to
> food. That said, we don't explicitly use condiments that are low salt,
> and other Cabal folks may bring things that have salt added.

Well stated.  The only ingredients I sometimes use that might have
_some_ salt would be commercial BBQ sauces / marinades that I buy in
bottles (because I'm lazy and don't want to start those from scratch, 
though I do typically add ingredients, like more crushed garlic).  And
that embedded salt doesn't seem like much.

Oh, and my fresh sourdough bread has a small amount of salt, like 1 or 2 
tsp per loaf or such, because the recipe calls for that.

Otherwise, I am by habit extremely sparing on salt.  Not _quite_ as much
as I once was:

I picked up a zero-salt habit in the 1970s, when my newly widowed mother
had been ordered to eliminate salt from her diet, so she would not be
killed by out-of-control hypertension.  (Doctors gave that advice, back
then.)  Out of sympathy, young-me did likewise, going cold-turkey on all
possible salt.  Which seemed like a Good Idea at the Time.

Rolling forward to a hot summer day in the 1980s, I was on a two-day
bicycle tour from Concord to Sacramento State University and back (90
miles on Day One, 80 on Day Two, because different routes), and found
myself basically collapsing and falling off my bike on Day One in West
Sac'to, clammy and feeling very ill -- and quickly deduced that I'd
dangerously over-done the salt elimination.  That evening, at the Sac
State BBQ for riders, I made sure to have a good dosing of salt, and did
fine on the second day's ride home.

Which is a long-winded way of saying:  Sure, cut salt if so advised by
doctors, but don't forget that sodium is an essential electrolyte
component, without which brains and muscles just don't work, so, if you
want to keep on living, especially in hot seasons, make sure you have
some.