[jdjdjdkdksmdnd]

i think the topic of salt is misunderstood. ancient people didnt eat as much and they worked more and harder and also didnt have access to air conditioning. sweating more would deplete electrolytes and entering into dietary ketosis frequently would lead to a major decline of electrolytes. i think ancient people needed salt because they would get sick without it. but eveyone says its because they liked the taste

[qwytw]

> ketosis frequently

Considering their diets, which were very high in carbohydrates (not sugars though) compared to modern diets that seems highly unlikely. Can you actually ever enter "ketosis" if you're mainly eating bread and other grain products?

> i think ancient people needed salt because they would get sick without it. but eveyone says its because they liked the taste

They needed salt because there weren't that many other ways to preserve food. I doubt this has much to do with taste. Also modern people need salt too..

> ancient people didnt eat as much

That's debatable. According to our records medieval people did sometimes eat quite a lot. I guess the problem is that it varied a lot. You either had too much or to little food all of the time.

[jdjdjdkdksmdnd]

ancient rome and medieval europe are really different. you can enter ketosis every day on a diet of carbohydrates by eating one or two times a day, eating less or engaging in exercise would make that ketosis deeper and longer. all of this could have applied to most people until relatively recently.

[Wytwwww]

> ancient rome and medieval europe are really different

Why? Of course Northern European had different diets (e.g. lard instead of olive oil etc.) but on the Mediterranean cost diets weren't that similar.

> you can enter ketosis every day on a diet of carbohydrates by eating one or two times a day

So being on the brink of starvation all the time? Does not seem sustainable.

> all of this could have applied to most people until relatively recently

Highly unlikely. What makes you think that was the case?

[jdjdjdkdksmdnd]

no dude, its called intermittent fasting. it used to just the way people ate.

[qwebfdzsh]

You know that how exactly?

[jdjdjdkdksmdnd]

because they were much less fat than us, had almost none of the diseases we have that are all really metabolic dysfunction/diabetes at their root, and the general price and availability of food has only been getting better…

[HarHarVeryFunny]

> ancient people didnt eat as much

Not sure what you mean by that - at a time when people were largely self-sufficient and working the land, they obviously consumed enough calories for the work they were doing. The food may not have been great (a lot of bread!), but there would generally have been enough of it unless having to tough out the winter after a poor harvest.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

There was also a very practical use/need for salt as a food preservative, specifically for storing meat over the winter. Certainly this was the case in the middle ages in Britain, but maybe not in the more southernly parts of the roman empire with warmer climates where food production may have been more year-round.

[mastazi]

I always thought it was important mostly for food preservation.

[Wytwwww]

Yes it was. That hypothesis about ketosis is very wacky and not backed by any evidence. Premodern diets were very high in carbohydrates compared to modern ones....

[jdjdjdkdksmdnd]

dude are you kidding me. most premodern diets were mostly meat. then neolithic

[SethMurphy]

premodern: broadly defined as between the late medieval period and the mid-nineteenth century.

[qwytw]

And you have to go back 4000 - 7000 years to get to a time when "diets were mostly meat" in Europe and the Middle East.