Salt?

December 3rd, 2022| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), they say, are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide: 17,800,000 deaths and 35,700,000 human-years of living with disability. The economic burden is considerable, over $200,000,000,000 (that’s $200 billion), just in the USA alone, and predicted to increase.

So prevention is at the top of every cardiovascular health scheme devised by mankind. Of these schemes, reducing high blood pressure is at the top. And with regard to that endeavor, salt restriction has oft been touted.

Noted an editorial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology this month:

Salt effect on target organs is multifactorial and involves an interplay of blood pressure regulation, microbiome, hormonal, inflammatory, and immunological responses. It is anticipated that lowering sodium intake could prevent CVD by modifying the … neuronal modulation of the cardiovascular system, thereby reducing blood pressure and end-organ damage.”

Cardiac damage, brain damage, kidney damage—all can be ameliorated by cutting out salt in the diet. It can also prevent damage of the stomach lining, and thus reduce H. pylori infections, and thereby decrease chances of your getting a stomach cancer. And prevent osteoporosis. And kidney stones. And obesity.

In that same issue of the journal, in “Adding Salt to Foods and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease,” scientists looked at 176,500 participants from the UK, initially free from CVDs. These subjects also answered questionnaires on how frequently they added salt to food, and how much (and what) they had eaten in the past 24 hours. After 10 years of follow up, the bottom line was this:

Our findings indicate that lower frequency of adding salt to foods is associated with lower risk of CVD, particularly heart failure and ischemic heart disease.”

So leave that salt-shaker alone!

But Christians are called to deal in salt. There is a peculiar section in Mark that talks of the saltiness of the Jesus-follower. It comes right after Jesus’s teaching on servanthood:

And sitting down, He called the Twelve and said to them,
“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark 9:35

The passage then closes with this:

“For everyone will be salted with fire.
Salt is good; but if salt becomes unsalty,
with what will you season it?
Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Mark 9:49–50

Rather obscure, the whole imagery is. The best guess is that it alludes to the Temple sacrifice.

“Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt,
… with all your offerings you shall offer salt.”
Leviticus 2:13

Salt with animal sacrifices were a thing.

“You shall present [animals] before Yahweh,
and the priests shall throw salt on them,
and they shall offer them up as a burnt offering to Yahweh.”
Ezekiel 43:24

But in Mark, in Jesus’s words, it is the disciple who is the salted “sacrifice.” Their attitudes of servanthood and their hearts of humility render them as appropriate sacrifices, “salted” and acceptable to God.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.
Romans 12:1

Disciples must be ready to live a sacrificial (“salted”) life. And, of course, in the very next chapter we have the paradigmatic example of this sacrifice:

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,
and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:45

Be a salted sacrifice on the altar by all means. But sacrifice the salt on the table.

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology