How to increase sodium in diet, without a salty taste

(Consensus is Politics) #1

Non salty tasting sodium? Personally, I have noticed I don’t taste salt when my electrolytes should be low. For instance I was unable to keep my salt intake up for a few days and got cramps. Drinking my salt water mix, I don’t taste the salt unless I add an extreme amount, like 1 tsp per .5 liter. At that point I begin to taste the salt, and then just barely. In my opinion this makes me think that perhaps the lower the bodies sodium is, the less I can taste it, prompting me to add more until I can taste it. Like in a PID feed back, the more I need, the less I taste, the more I add, until it reaches an equilibrium where the reverse happens.

The reason I’m asking about a tasteless salt is for the wife. She tried going keto, and loved the 16 pound weight loss in two weeks. But then night cramps hit. I helped her cure that by increasing salt intake, drinking salt water before bed. But she doesn’t like salty tastes at all. So much that she’d Rather deal with diabetes than eat salty food.

I tried salt pills. But those make her sick. I tried to get her to take them with food, try to get them out of her stomach before the coating they have melts off, but she refuses to give them another chance. She’s the type that doesn’t do second chances. If it happened once, it’s always that way :roll_eyes:. No room for argument.

So she’s back to eating a mostly carb diet. Lots of white rice, flour, but at least no added white sugar. Well at least she doesn’t add any. She likes Truvia, and uses that now in her coffee. But she still likes to eat chips, candy bars, sugary treats du’jor (sp?)

My internet search for “non salty tasting salt” always comes up with the exact opposite. “Salty tasting non salts” :roll_eyes:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

This is a toughy! What about foods that contain a lot of sodium naturally, so that there’s at least no taste of added salt?

Another trick, used in a lot of Chinese cookery, is that the sweet and salt tastes are antagonists, so that you can tone down salt by adding sweetener, and tone down sweetness by adding salt.

(Consensus is Politics) #3

That would be a great idea. Except she would notice. She doesn’t like a lot of sweets. Even though she likes to eat certain candies, for instance she bought a pack of almond joys that have a dozen “fun size” bars in it. She might eat one or two of those in a day, maybe. She does like the occasional sweet, but can’t eat much of it at one time. And certainly can’t eat an entire sweet meal.

And get this… she is Korean. And when she makes kimchi uses very little salt. Now I’m no expert on making kimchi’s, but I’m pretty sure the reason they use as much salt as it typically calls for is to make it shelf stable? I remember when I was in Korea, the typical way it’s made (or originally made) was to make it, and bury it in a clay pot in the ground near the house. Then leave it there for a while. Months maybe? Letting it ferment or ripen. Fresh kimchi is ok, but I love ripe, stinky, kimchi. I can it eat straight up, all by it self.

Anyway, I get a little worried about hers, thinking it might get something growing in it being low sodium. But she keeps it in the fridge to keep it from getting ripe :pensive:.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

I hear there’s a kimchi museum in Seoul. Have you been?

Good luck helping your wife. She sounds like a very interesting woman!

(Karim Wassef) #5

Salt tastes salty…

I find that using more complex flavors helps offset one taste getting overloaded.

So, bitter, sour and umami are your friend. Sweet too but not much for me.

Lime juice and ACV for sour.
Coffee and cacao for bitter.
Mushrooms and fermented foods for umami.

I personally mix coffee, cacao, stevia, ACV and a lot of pink Himalayan salt with MCT oil and heavy whipping cream to get almost all the flavors and benefits in my coffee blend.

I can’t taste the salt - too much going on and the flavors just blend and mellow.

The secret ingredient was cacao… somehow, it makes the sour ACV, salty salt … and bitter coffee work together. Without it - it was literally intolerable. I can even enjoy it without stevia.

(Laurie) #6

I don’t like salty taste either, and when I tried to eat more salt it just came out the other end.

However, I have gradually increased my tolerance by adding small amounts to foods and drinks, including lemonade (made with stevia) and hot cocoa. You can suggest to your wife that she try increasing her salt intake bit by bit.

Natural sources of sodium include celery, artichokes, and eggs, and ground beef to a lesser extent.

And there might be some high-sodium foods that she happens to like. Sausages perhaps?

I still don’t get anywhere near the amount of sodium that has been recommended in this forum. I don’t have any problems that could be attributed to too little sodium. I do try to get enough magnesium and potassium. Rather than concentrating on sodium, could she try increasing her magnesium and potassium intake?

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #7

This is a great discussion from the past, Brenda and Donna kicked the leg pain for good with this:

https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/leg-cramps/7805

(Carl Keller) #8

One ounce of Frank’s Red Hot sauce has almost 1000mg of sodium. In general, hot sauces are pretty high in sodium content, if she can tolerate those.

(Karim Wassef) #9

Good point. In addition to eating a lot of pink Himalayan salt (that has more potassium and magnesium), I also take both as supplements.

(Consensus is Politics) #10

Thanks for the replies everyone. Sad to say I have tried pretty much all of these. Luckily she does like spicy foods, and she does go through my Louisiana Hot sauce pretty quick. If my math was right, it has 1100 mg of sodium per ounce (200 mg per tap, 1 tsp serving, 71 servings. The problem is she can’t tolerate vinegar. She says it makes her gums hurt :grimacing:.

Guess I was really hoping somekind of silver bullet here. Sodium bound to something other than chloride, that isn’t toxic, and adds to our bodies sodium as an electrolyte, masking the taste without the other element bound to it causing some unforeseen problem.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #11

Cottage cheese has 819 mg of sodium per cup, will she eat that? Also there are other cheeses with a high amount of sodium per serve. Salami and pepperoni also have good amounts of sodium, will she eat those?

(Laurie) #12

Check out sodium sulphate, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and hot sauces without vinegar (either recipes or ready made). Good luck!

(Full Metal KETO AF) #13

Not the best keto thing but tomatoes are high in sodium. When I got keto flu at the beginning I couldn’t bring myself to drink salty water. I have a kitchen scale and I weighed out doses of Himalayan pink rock salt and swallowed them like pills. She could have a little dish with those rocks and just take a few here and there throughout the day when she has a drink of water. The rocks are almost flavorless.

(Robert C) #14

I tried following a coach’s advice and did straight teaspoons of salt pink.

Non-starter for me (wanted to barf, upchuck, hurl, chip, puke, ride the porcelain bus, vomit, technicolor yawn,…).

What I have found that works for me is overpowering the salt - with some hot cayenne pepper.

It burns so nicely going down that you don’t notice - anything else.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

. . . worship the porcelain goddess, call Ralph on the porcelain phone, . . .

(Consensus is Politics) #16

That’s what I’m looking for! Ty ty ty. I’ll test sodium bicarbonate on myself for a few days and see how it works. The worst I can imagine is weak stomach acid for a short time. So probably do it an hour or so after a meal? And definitely not before bed, just Incase it triggers acid reflux by not being acidic enough to keep that sphincter shut.

(Consensus is Politics) #17

Another great idea! Ty! I’m assuming the salt rocks (pebbles?) don’t dissolve readily in the stomach? I can see some issues if the do (I’ll be specific in another reply following this one on the next post.)

(Consensus is Politics) #18

Be careful when ingesting salt strait up like that. If it’s large crystals, it might be ok. But I was in a hurry once, and took a teaspoon of Morton’s Kosher salt. Roughly size of normal sized snowflakes? Very flakey, not chunky, dissolve in water almost as fast as regular table salt. With in a minute I felt the need to regurgitate :nauseated_face:. I knew it had to be that salt. My stomach was telling me “WARNING! WARNING! Will Robinson! DANGER! TOXINS DETECTED! EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY”. So instead of that, I ran and got a bottled water and chased it down. The urge went away in seconds. So I downed another .5 liter to be sure. No cramps are hat night! *no cramps THAT NIGHT

[sigh feel free to ignore this epilogue… I have addressed my typos and seeming grammar fooaux in another post. But this is ridiculous. I guess Apple knows better than me. I turned off auto correct, and the next day it’s back on again. I swear, dealing with Apple’s technology the past couple of decades has been like rolling a boulder to the top of a hill, only to discover you just made it to the bottom and need to keep going, at infinittum (really apple, no auto correct for that?) I miss the old Apple. From the Apple IIe days. A 1 MHz computer that could out perform the similar PC clones running at 4.77 MHz.]

(Karim Wassef) #19

Seaweed (Nori)

(Full Metal KETO AF) #20

I was on the airplane all day today and had headache when I got home. I swallowed 5 grams of rocks and I didn’t have any problem. Maybe the rocks dissolve slower than salt tablets. But my stomach was empty except for coffee and water. I may need a few more grams because I still have a headache. :frowning: