Do You Need Lite Salt on Keto?

I got this question in a private message the other day as a result of something I said in a video and thought it warranted its own blog post I could refer people to the next time it came up.

I am always talking about the importance of salting your food to taste on keto because the ketogenic diet can can cause sodium shortages due to the fact that you don’t retain water or salt as well as you can on a high carb diet.

But what about Lite salt? Should you be using that also or instead of salt? Why use it at all?

Hopefully by the end of this post we will have a clearer understanding of what lite salt is and when you should use it.

Why Was Lite Salt Invented?

The reason lite salt exists is because we have been told for years to limit our sodium intake so industry created a low sodium salt made from potassium chloride instead of the normal sodium chloride.

So when you switch out the normal salt for the lite salt, you are switching out the sodium for a higher intake of potassium.

Increasing your potassium intake isn’t the worst idea in the world in the world as the RDA for potassium is 4.7g (4700 mg) which is a lot, far more than the average American gets in a day.

In fact it is estimated that less than 2% of Americans are meeting their RDA recommended minimum of potassium.

Dangers of Too Much Potassium

Here’s the trick though, your body keeps sodium and potassium in tight control and both need to be available on ample amounts to do everything your body needs to do.

If you cut out all the normal salt, switch over to only lite salt AND eat a diet low in processed foods that usually provide a lot of sodium AND eat a low carb diet that causes the body to not retain much sodium, you could have a recipe for disaster. Here’s one such horror story I found.

So what’s the secret?

Here’s what I recommend and have seen success with in the 5 years or so I have been doing this. Use both. I usually salt to taste with my Redmond’s Real Salt, then sprinkle a little lite salt on for good measure.

Fortunately I have a high tolerance for salt on my food and don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything and thought it was too salty. If you don’t like salt, you can under salt with the real salt and then kind of top it off with the potassium salt.

Another option is to use Morton Lite Salt because it is a half and half blend of both real salt and lite salt and is also Iodized if you are looking for that as well.