I wondered why we need so much salt in our food, if nearly all of it gets excreted almost imediately.

I got an idea that maybe the urge to eat salty is actually a response to excess chloride, with the purpose that the sodium could be used to get rid of the extra chloride ions. However, since all the sodium we consume comes from sodium chloride, this doesn't work as the same amount of chloride gets eaten with it, throwing us into an endless cycle of craving salt, only the sodium being used up to excrete all the chloride that was eaten with it.

What does /sci/ think?