Actually from researchers are bringing us back around to the idea that in many cases, particularly Type II diabetes, SUGAR intake is the cause. Particularly harmful is the fructose part that makes up half of table sugar and 55% of HFCS.
Fructose may be toxic in the doses most people are consuming and it is processed in the liver. The damage to the liver is also being linked to the imbalance between HDL and LDL cholesterol as fructose break down masks the receptors the liver uses to detect it has enough LDL cholesterol in the blood. And unless you only eat sugar before a big workout, most of what you consume gets turned into triglycerides that also contributes to the slow death of heart disease.
For this article to make the claims you point out immediately brings into question the validity of it’s major points. In reality salt is only a problem in a subset of heart disease patients. It is suspected to related to how the body retains wafer at inflammation, but we really don’t know why that subset is sodium sensitive.