What is better for you, salt or sugar?

There is an important distinction that you must make here: Salt and sugar are NOT ‘’bad for your body.” It is only when consumption of salt and sugar (and by this, I assume you mean sucrose, or refined table sugar, not glucose, fructose, et cetera) are in excess that you start running into problems.

By themselves, there is nothing dangerous with consuming salt or sugar. Both provide their own benefits to the human body, and in fact, humanity evolved to be hard-wired to seek out sugar, salt, and fat as primary nutritional resources, three things that are in very short supply in the wild.

Salt is vitally important in maintaining proper nerve function and limiting the production of dangerous ions within your cells. Cutting all salt from your diet could lead to severely crippling after-effects. As far as sugar goes, from an evolutionary standpoint, it was the greatest energy source available to our ancestors, but because sucrose is available present in very few places (honey, cane, and beets, mainly), for millions of years, eating too much was never an issue.

These days, sucrose as an energy source is no longer strictly necessary, especially with so many carbohydrates available that have other nutritious benefits, like fiber. We’re still programmed to eat as much of it as possible, unfortunately. But salt consumption is still important to keep your body operating properly, so if you had to choose which one to nix, it would be sugar. But neither one, consumed in moderation, is harmful (unless you suffer from conditions like hypoglycemia or diabetes, of course).