Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where we take a closer look at the

latest nutrition trends and headlines so that you can make more informed decisions about what you eat.

I'm your host, Monica Reinagel, and I have been getting lots of questions lately about salt. Victoria, a listener who is also a registered dietician,

recently wrote about what she sees as an unsafe trend. I keep seeing social media influencers raving about a new product called

LMNT, she writes, which contains a thousand milligrams of sodium per packet.

The creators claim that consuming 4 to 6,000 milligrams of sodium per day

is beneficial for health.

And a lot of these influencers

say that they are drinking multiple packets per day.

Meanwhile, the most recent dietary guidelines for Americans continues to stress the need

for Americans to reduce the amount of sodium they are taking in.

And in order to help people reach those targets, the FDA is pressuring food manufacturers

to reduce the amount of sodium in their products.

So, which is it? Are we taking in too much

sodium or too little? Although you'd never guess it from all the hand-ringing

about reducing sodium, sodium is an essential nutrient.

Without it, we would die.

Most essential nutrients have a daily recommended intake, that's the amount that's needed to prevent deficiency.

And with many nutrients, protein comes to mind, there is a difference between the minimum amount necessary to prevent diseases of deficiency

and the amount that promotes optimal health. The daily recommended intakes,

the DRI, are only concerned with the former.

And for more on efforts to increase the recommended intake of protein for certain populations,

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