Have you noticed that fresh food is getting rare? In the morning, it's either juice or milk for us... they are in tetra packs. The bread is freshly baked by the nearby bread store but the fried spam or sauteed corned beef both came from the can which contains preservatives. I can enumerate what we eat for a week and it will show that majority of the foods on our plate are processed food that has preservatives. It's a consolation that there is no instant egg yet, at least the eggs are still fresh and pure. Where is the essence of freshness? Is this progress for us? Who knows if those canned goods and ingredients in packets are contributory to the health issues we have now.
I would be extremely happy if I could find canned or prepared food with absolutely no salt or sugar added. My store only has low sodium food, and only a limited variety of that, still with salt. They do have potato chips with no salt. I used to buy those. I'm so used to low sodium food that I no longer miss salt.
There is still fresh food, you just have to make it yourself and even then you have to look at the meat you are buying so that it's not injected with anything. Fresh vegetables, etc. Anything premade won't be healthy but I'm sure there are people that eat nothing but and have lived a long life. Except for watching sodium like Ike has to or sugar for diabetics, most people will get through life eating a mixture of processed and home cooked. There are a lot of factors that play into your overall health.
When I go to the store, I generally shop mainly in the outside isles, which is where most of the fresh foods are at, at least in the Kroger where I mainly shop. We have modified our diets to where the foods that we can buy fresh are mainly what we live on. I do still buy some canned veggies; but not very often, and mostly just keep a few on hand to use in case of an emergency situation where we had no power and can't cook. Some foods you just can't buy fresh and unprocessed, such as milk product and meat products. Unless you milk your own cow or goat, all milk you buy has been commercially pasteurized and homogenized , and all of the meat has been sprayed with preservatives. We use himalayan sea salt, which is good for you and not full of chemicals like the regular processed salt you buy. It has so much more actual "salty" flavor that it takes less of the himalayan sea salt to make your food taste salty, plus it adds minerals and natural iodine , which are necessary. Many people are actually not getting enough alt, especially seniors, because we have been told to avoid it, and if you have heat stroke, tthe first thing they will do is give you a saline solution IV to get the salt level back up again.
True but if someone is retaining water because of health issues than it's best to follow drs orders and cut back on sodium, otherwise they'll have to take larger doses of a diuretic which isn't a good solution.