Not salt, SODIUM. Salt is sodium-chloride and was probably ZERO at the time of our African development. Inland Maoris and Kuna dumped salt entirely and seem to have exceptional health and perfect blood pressure.

Since we're not drinking beef blood and things, a little salt is probably fine because we need sodium. But technically we don't need doses of chloride. Cordain says sodium:potassium should be 1:5 - 1:10. I could live with that.

Salt is hard to replace because it gives everything a dimension of flavor. I'm definitely not one of those people who can experience the "subtle taste" from herbs and spices - that's total horse as far as I'm concerned. The only worthy substitute I found for salt is Benson's Table Tasty - a dried vegetable and herb mix that is amazing. But they do use nightshades(I passed it through a mesh collander to get rid of bell pepper seeds).

Other than that, I guess just don't abuse it like WAPFers do.

I believe salt has always been good for us and necessary. You can get sick if you don't have enough sodium chloride, from headaches to dizziness. If you drink too much water without eating salty foods, then you run the risk of water intoxication.

Personally, I can feel if I need salt in my system, similar to how one gets thirsty. But I think we crave more salt than necessary. I think its evolutionary, way back from the times land animals emerged from the ocean. As long as we listen to our own bodies, I think we're fine.

The man is the only living organism that "eats" salt. The salt is "invented" for preserving food. It is not necessary for your health - but opposite it is bad. It is not true that we need a salt in order to have a good health. No outer living thing in the planet does not consume salt. Humans did not consume salt millions of years. Americans did nod consume salt before white man came and they had better health then the white man.

So it is pure nonsense that we need a salt so live. Without it we would be healtyer.

Sodium, Chloride, Iodine and much more is found in the food. If you eat fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds you have everything you need. This is how life works.

The body cannot metabolize salt. It is entered like a salt in the body, and it leaves the body as salt. The salt pushes the water out of the cells. It is a biocid.

The live does not require factories to exists.

http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/condiments/salt.html

Chris Kresser recently wrote a great series of articles in which he examines both historical consumption and health implications of salt.

He writes that "Preagricultural humans are estimated to have consumed only 768 mg of sodium each day (about 1950 mg of salt), which is much lower than our current intake." This estimate is based on a paper of paleolithic nutrition by S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9104571

Ultimately he advises that "adding unrefined salt to a whole foods Paleo diet is perfectly healthy. By limiting grains and processed foods, the amount of sodium in your diet will already be drastically reduced as compared to the standard American diet. A bit of salt can make certain healthy foods, particularly bitter vegetables, far more palatable. Considering the evidence I’ve presented in this series, I believe that salt restriction for the general population is not only unnecessary, but potentially dangerous."

Check out the whole series here: http://chriskresser.com/shaking-up-the-salt-myth

I would imagine that our ancestors would have settled near the ocean and eaten lots of salt water fish/animals. That being said I think sea salt would be the best option and I do believe that salt is important to our diet. Keep in mind though that pre packaged foods have unnecessarily high amounts of salt and that if you're getting salt it should be from your shaker.

We can't actually know this, but consider what happens when animals find natural salt deposits. When deer find salt, they'll sit there and lick it. The phenomenon is so well known that hunters put out salt to attract deer. So, what I am thinking is that people are trying to answer this question based on what we ate, but the idea of putting the salt on our food was invented at some point. Before that people got it directly out of their environment like the deer do.

From a personal perspective, I found it necessary to increase salt intake sometime after going paleo. My blood pressure can get too low, and I've experienced a lot of weird little symptoms that seem to clear up with more salt. So, either the initial assumptions that Cordain and other researchers had were flawed, or somehow my previous SAD eating ways set me up to need a higher level of salt than I otherwise would need.