Great post, and in two languages! You're right about the British fear of salt, for a country which tends to be a little more health concious then Australia, I'm not surprised to see they jumped on the Anti-salt bandwagon.
I had two things to add though (as usual :P ).
Salt intake in people becomes more important as they age and their kidneys start becoming a little dodgy. Usually our body works hard to keep salt in or allow it to flow out, depending on our blood pressure. But as we age our kidneys stop filtering so much blood (called our glomerular filtration rate) and we lose our ability to regulate that salt balance so well. As you've mentioned salt is super hydrophilic and as such it's that major 'carrier' of water in our body. If someone who's a bit older with dodgy kidneys goes overboard on the salt, their body might not be able to compensate. Similarly if they've got higher blood pressure for some other reason, starving them of salt can artificially be use as a method to drag that BP down!
I've heard this story a few times, but I'm not sure how much truth is in it. Apparently duing his golden-years Ghandi was fighting pretty hard to reduce British influence in India. Part of this meant that he wanted to stop the importation of British salt. He was fairly convinced that the British telling him they needed iodised salt was a hoax to stop india producing their own salt (salt's one thing any nation, no matter how poor, can produce). As such he banned iodized salt and relied on only Indian salts. The fallout over the last several decased has been a huge number of deaths due to chronic hypothyroidism! I'm sure the truth is far more complex, but it makes a good bed-time story for science undergrads and the importance of not mixing science with politics!
Thanks for the awesome post :)
I never heard the Ghandi story, that's really a "nice" anectote. Ty for commenting.