Added salt and sugar

Salt is a bad actor in the modern diet. Even if your blood pressure is normal, consuming the typical quantities of salt in the standard American diet does damage.

Of course we need some salt. The optimal amount is (I know this is going to amaze you) the amount naturally found in the plant foods that your species evolved eating.

Most cooking styles around the world use large amounts of salt as a flavor enhancer. Processed foods and canned foods contain enormous amounts, and added sugar as well. They are inexpensive ingredients, and add taste to what would otherwise be a flavorless pile of starch, dairy fat, or aged meat. It's like a bad rock and roll band that turns up their equipment incredibly loud, hoping to cover up the fact that they don't really have much to say musically.

Added salt and sugar deaden one's taste so that the naturally occurring salt and sugars interacting with the rich, complex and varied flavors in vegetables cannot be enjoyed. That is why high-salt cooking styles are usually very strongly spiced. And it is why everyone thinks that a nutritarian diet must taste terrible. In fact, the opposite is true, and to nutritarians the standard American diet seems like tiny portions of boring, salt-drenched or bizarrely oversweetened fake food.

If you are using added salt or sugar, then, frankly speaking, right now you are not very good at tasting food. When you stop eating all foods with added salt or sugar, then whatever you eat will taste pretty bad for a while, as much as a couple of months for some people. But just be patient, it will be worth it.

Among its many health benefits, going to a nutritarian diet will resolve almost all cases of hypertension (high blood pressure). In fact, I once saw a woman faint a few days after going to nutritarian food, because her blood pressure meds started pushing her pressure too low. So if you decide to become a nutritarian, and are on blood pressure medication, you should be closely monitored so that your doctor can decrease your dosage appropriately. The full effects, however, can take several years. Most people can eventually lower their blood pressure close to the healthy level they had as children.