Are Potassium Chloride Salt Substitutes Safe and Effective?

Only unhealthy diets rank higher among global risk factors for death, as you can see below and at 0:41 in my video Potassium Chloride Salt Substitute Side Effects . We can improve both by eating more whole, healthy plant foods like greens and beans, which are packed with potassium and help lower blood pressure.

But since most of us are getting too much sodium along with too little potassium, what about using salt substitutes? Potassium chloride is the most common salt substitute, so you’d be swapping out sodium for potassium.

Most of the trials involved swapping out regular salt for substitutes with less than 30% potassium chloride, and they still got results. And at less than 30% potassium chloride, most people can’t even tell the difference between regular salt and the potassium salt. The only principal concern for healthy people is that if you go 100% sodium-free and use potassium chloride salt substitutes exclusively, you may find it can taste kind of funny, adding a bitter or metallic taste.

So, I tried the potassium chloride salt substitute, and it worked perfectly. The reason healthy people don’t have to worry about getting too much potassium is that they just pee out the excess, thanks to the kidneys.

But that’s with the potassium in food—what about supplements? In fact, blood levels of potassium are maintained in the normal range by healthy kidneys even when potassium intake is increased to about 15,000 mg a day. That’s no surprise since we evolved eating so many potassium-rich plant foods that the natural intake of potassium for the human species may have been on the order of 15,000 mg a day.

Basically, the normal range for potassium levels in the blood is between 3.5 and 5.0 mmol/L; it becomes concerning when it starts creeping up towards 6 mmol/L. But give people potassium supplements—like the salt substitution trials where participants receive an average of about 2,000 daily milligrams—and blood levels only uptick by 0.14 mmol/L.

Someone with a “massive banana eating habit” could bump their potassium from a normal level to above 6 mmol/L, but this specific case was evidently the result of eating little else besides up to 20 bananas a day for years. That’s like 75 carrots in one day—only really possible with a juicer, which is what one person attempted as part of a quack cancer cure.

Ironically, potassium is so good at reducing deaths from high blood pressure—even among those with kidney disease—that using potassium chloride salt substitutes would probably still save more lives despite the risk, as you can see below and at 5:45 in my video . So, the practice of restricting dietary potassium in kidney patients should really be reserved for patients with documented hyperkalemia, a potassium level of 6 or higher, because the key to halting the progression of chronic kidney disease might in fact lie in the produce aisle. If you missed the first two, check out The Mineral Intake Recommendations Only 1 in 6,000 U.S.