Dr. McDougall and Jeff Novick RD on Sodium

Jeff Novick RD is a long time advocate of whole food plant based diets. He worked at the Pritikin Longevity Center for years and currently lectures at Dr. John McDougall’s 10-day live in programs. Obviously Novick and McDougall see eye-to-eye on most dietary issues. However, their views on dietary sodium always seemed world’s apart. I always perceived that Dr. McDougall’s concern about dietary sodium intake was much less than that of Jeff Novick’s.

In this nine minute video interview, Dr. McDougall discusses his philosophy on dietary sodium. Early on, he gives the impression that he is quite liberal in the amount of sodium he allows the majority of his patients. But later on, he states that even though he allows his patients to use a salt shaker during their 10-day stay, most keep their  daily intake below the recommended tolerable upper limit of 2300 mg. If patients decide not to use the salt shaker, they will probably stay under the Institute of Medicine’s recommended intake of <1500 mg per day. Dr. McDougall appears to think that this is fine, but he also appears to believe that if people exceed 2300 mg on a daily basis, it’s probably not too big of a deal.

In this article by Jeff Novick, he explains how certain media outlets have distorted results of scientific studies that showed deleterious effects of low sodium diets. It turns out that these effects involved a small “at-risk population” consisting of people with failing hearts who are on massive doses of diuretics and other blood pressure medications. In these very ill people, drastically lowering their salt intake without changing their medications can indeed cause problems. But Novick believes that the vast majority of people need to dramatically reduce their sodium/salt intake.

As I concluded in an article I wrote back in November of 2014, I find that Jeff Novick’s sodium density approach is the best way to help people whose blood pressure remains high after transitioning to a WFPB diet..

Novick does appear to be more concerned than Dr, McDougall about dietary sodium for the general public. Where do you stand?