Vegetarians do not need salt

Bunge believed that salt is essential with vegetable foods to-counteract the excess of potash. This notion was exploded by Renmerich and Kurz, who, by careful experiment, showed that salt does not have the effect Bunge attributed to it.
Bunge was a German chemist, who lived more than eighty-years ago. He stated that vegetarians need and crave salt, whereas meat eaters need and crave it less. The theory was based on a misconception of "biochemistry" and not upon observations of vegetarians. As a rule, to which there are many exceptions, vegetarians abstain from salt and these abstainers experience no craving for salt. There is never a need to eat common table salt.
Vegetarians who crave salt are those who so prepare their vegetables that the organic salts that exist so abundantly in them are lost. All of the organic salts are soluble in water, and when the vegetables are boiled and the water thrown away, there is naturally a craving for salt - not, however, for common table salt, but for the organic salts of foods. There are thousands of vegetable feeders who not only do not have a craving for salt but who positively loathe it.
Prof. Morgulis, who accepts the antiquated notion of Bunge,that vegetarians and vegetable eating animals crave and must have salt, admits, at the same time, that the lack of common salt in the food, of itself, has no ill effects on the general metabolism or on the digestive function." He points out that there is a much greater excretion of chlorine through the urine during the early part of a fast than in the latter stages, and says, "it is certain that most of this chlorine comes from the salt added as condiment to the food."
He tells us that when Grunewald kept rabbits on a diet practically free from chlorides, "the elimination of chlorides in the urine ceased almost at once," but no ill effects were, otherwise, observed .He adds that when "diuretin was administered after the excretion of chloride stopped as much as one gram of chloride was caused to be eliminated, and if the dosage was repeated several times symptoms of toxemia appeared such as extreme muscular weakness, trembling, paralysis of hind limbs which soon also extended to the anterior of the body and which, in a few days, resulted in death. The chlorine content of the blood actually diminished 50 and in some extreme cases even 75 per cent."
Diuretin (theobromin sodiosalicylate) is a poisonous powder or drug given to increase the flow of urine. The experiment described above proves that chlorine is extracted from the tissues of the body in neutralizing and expelling it. This loss of chlorine, from the organic compounds of the body, resulted in death. This does not prove that ordinary table salt is valuable to the body. The statement by Prof. Morgulis that "this effect was produced entirely through the withdrawal of chlorine from the tissues and not by the diuretin itself, since this had no effect whatever when administered in conjunction with sodium chloride" does not prove that we need table salt, it only proves that we should not take diuretin. For,while diuretin may combine with inorganic salt and, while this may save the cell-chlorides, it by no means follows that inorganic salts of chlorine are of use to the tissues of the body. The body can utilize sodium and chlorine only when received from foods inorganic combinations.
Prof. Morgulis repeats the old myth about animals craving salt and seeking salt licks and says, "hunters of deer, for instance,have always exploited this instinct, waiting for their game near the salt licks." Hunters have, also, always exploited the instinct of the ostrich to hide itself from danger by burying its head in the sand,waiting for their game near the sand dunes. The ostrich never runs his head in the sand and the deer never seeks the "salt licks" and hunters do not even know where the "salt licks" are. This saltlick myth is like the vegetarians' craving for salt. The few vegetarians who use salt, use it sparingly. Most vegetarians do not use salt - most meat eaters use it freely. I do not know why "orthodox" men continue to lie about vegetarians. They cannot plead ignorance of the fact, for the facts are obtainable and it behooves a man of science to obtain the facts before he writes.