Below is an excerpt from Part One of

The 2004 Multi-Diet

by Anderson A. Anonymous, M.D., Ph.D.

Potassium

We'll discuss potassium first, because of all the macrominerals, potassium is one of the easiest to manage but will also cause you the most serious problems if you don't manage it right.

On a 1500-Calorie per day diet, it is unlikely that you will get more than three-quarters of your RDI of potassium from food unless you are routinely eating one of the relatively few foods that contain unusually large amounts of it. (Tomato sauce is one such food.) This means that over a period of time you can become dangerously depleted.

Besides "waking The Beast", potassium depletion is dangerous because adequate potassium is vital to keeping the heart beating rhythmically. You use potassium supplements in order to prevent yourself from becoming depleted while you are on The Multi-Diet.

But, there is a serious potential problem with potassium supplements. Using supplements makes it very easy for you to regularly take too much potassium. You must not do this!

Regular oversupplementing is just as dangerous as not supplementing at all---because too much potassium in the blood also prevents the heart from beating rhythmically. (You will find the research and references on this along with much else in the section on POTASSIUM on page 237 in Part Two.)

It is therefore very important for you to watch your intake of this particular mineral very carefully. The RDI of potassium set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is 3500-mg per day for adults (not children). This amount is therefore almost certainly safe for every healthy adult. But routinely going over this amount is probably unsafe for many people.

To avoid the problems of either too little or too much potassium while dieting, the recommendation of The Multi-Diet is to take about one-quarter to one-third of the RDI of potassium as a supplement---and only while you are dieting. How do you do this?

There are many FDA-approved forms of potassium supplement readily available. I think one of the easiest ways to supplement potassium is to go to the supermarket and find (usually in the salt section) a 50/50 mixture of potassium chloride and sodium chloride. Morton Lite Salt( is one brand usually widely available, and there may be others. One-half teaspoon (2.8 grams) of this mixture provides you almost exactly 20% (700-mg) of the RDI of potassium and 25% (600-mg) of the RDI of sodium. The easiest way to use it is to spread a total of about one-half to three-quarters of a teaspoon (or maybe a little more) through your meals each day. Under most conditions, the food itself will provide the rest of the potassium you need for the day.6 Potassium gluconate tablets are also available and are very useful in situations where "lite" salt would be inconvenient.

[Note: According to the USDA Nutrient Database, coffee, which is often considered to be just flavored water with caffeine, also has about 125 mg of potassium per cup (regular strength). So this can be a significant source if you drink a lot of it. Please take this into account when calculating your potassium intake.]

However, if you know, think, or even suspect that you may have any kind of medical problem, you should first make your doctor aware that you plan to supplement minerals and heed any advice he or she may have on the subject. I want you to lose that fat, not your health. (You should also read the section on POTASSIUM beginning on page 237 in Part Two, which lists the known deficiency/toxicity symptoms for potassium, along with other useful information.) 

Sodium and Chloride

Sodium and chloride are the next two macrominerals that we'll discuss. They are incredibly easy to manage and supplement using ordinary table salt. The main practical problem with sodium on diets is that most people tend to assume they're getting enough sodium when they really aren't. This is opposite to the situation in "normal life" where some people probably do regularly get more sodium than is good for them. (But please see my rant on this below.:))

The RDI of sodium is 2400-mg and in "normal life" many people routinely get much more than this without any apparent ill effects. One teaspoon (6g) of table salt provides almost exactly the 2400-mg RDI of sodium together with 3600-mg of chloride (the FDA's Daily Value for chloride is 3400-mg). Most of the foods you typically eat on the Multi-Diet contain relatively small natural amounts of sodium, so it's not likely that you will routinely overdose if you spread a teaspoon of salt on the foods you eat throughout the day. However, bouillon cubes, which are very useful to Multi-Dieters (see Part Two) do have about 1,000-mg of sodium each.

If you are managing sodium properly, there is very little chance of either an excess or deficiency of chloride. Chloride is required by the body in relatively large amounts (e.g. in stomach acid for digestion), but is considered quite benign. The only known cause of excessive chloride accumulation in the body is dehydration caused by water-deficiency. Water-deficiency won't happen on the Multi-Diet, as you will see when we discuss THE WATER FACTOR below.

A Mild Rant about Sodium:)

Now I know that some people (not you, of course), when reading the above discussion of sodium, will go into automatic, 'borg-like rejection mode ("sodium... evil... must avoid... whirr, click...":)). This reaction is usually no more than a result of years of exposure to very undiscriminating anti-sodium propaganda. It is no more rational than insisting on eating 10 grams of sodium a day. The reality is that you need sodium and you need it in appropriate amounts. Too much is not good for you, but too little can be even worse.

A large amount of recent medical research also shows that some of the anti-sodium warnings have also had a certain "simpleminded" quality to them. In other words, they may simply be wrong except under special and not-very-common circumstances. (For more information on this, and other sodium issues, see the discussion and references in the section on SODIUM on page 241 in Part Two.)