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Even if you are not a potato chip and pretzel junkie, you’re probably eating more salt than you realize. Sodium, the main ingredient in table salt, can hide in places you don’t suspect, like in ketchup, frozen dinners, instant hot cereals and some medications. What’s Harmful About Sodium? High levels of sodium can cause the body to retain too much fluid. This can be harmful to people with high blood pressure or heart, liver or kidney diseases. People with these conditions should be especially careful about sodium intake. But there’s some debate on whether everyone needs to worry about all of this salt talk. We’ll listen to the USDA, who recommends that we need to choose and prepare foods with less sodium. The average American adult consumes about 2,500 to 5,000 milligrams of sodium a day. But we only need 1,100 to 3,300 milligrams, or about 1/2 to 1-1/2 teaspoons. That can be a pretty big difference. Where are we getting so much sodium in our diets? Think about all the times we add salt during cooking or as a seasoning to a prepared meal. Surprisingly, our own salt shaking doesn’t compare to the major sources of “hidden” sodium in our diets found in processed foods and baked products. Some examples include salad dressings, mustard, meat tenderizer, cheeses, instant foods, pickles, canned vegetables and soups, salsa and barbecue sauce. Even common medications such as antacids, laxatives and cough remedies contain sodium compounds. The keys to watching our sodium levels are to be aware of which foods have a high sodium content and to limit how much of those foods we eat. Practice checking the nutrition facts labels of packaged foods for the exact sodium content per serving. Some label terms can help our purchase decisions:
Steps to Reduce Your Sodium
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Laura Bofinger



Member Comments
It is worth obsessing over! - 2/22/2013 10:08:11 AM
God bless!
- 11/15/2012 3:30:27 PM
Be careful if you go the lite salt way, they usually have a high concentration of potassium which is not healthy either.
I think if you are one of those that has heart or kidney problems, it's very important to cut down (or out) the processed food it has too many hidden everythings. I like a little salt and pepper on some things, but I've noticed if you buy the gourmet salts you tend to use less for more flavour. - 11/15/2012 3:54:40 AM
lly that is due to other causes rather than a diet low in sodium. Oh...no difference between sea salt and regular salt, except that sea salt is a little coarser...might be taking in less because of that. Salt is salt. - 2/28/2012 12:18:48 PM
(Admittedly, no salt added cottage cheese is a bit bland until I add in fruit which I usually did anyway. So many better ways to add some zest than such a high amount of salt.) - 2/14/2012 2:42:01 PM
ificamerican.
com/article.c
fm?id=its-tim
e-to-end-the-war-on-salt. In a study published recently in JAMA, http://jama.ama-a
ssn.org/conte
nt/306/20/222
9.abstract, people with sodium intake below 3000mg/day had a higher death rate than people who consumed between 4000mg/day and 6000mg/day. Over 7000mg/day is certainly too much, but you if you succeed in attaining an unrealistically low sodium intake you might not be getting enough. - 12/26/2011 11:47:15 AM
An easy way to calculate is to aim for 500 mg sodium at breakfast, 600 mg at lunch and dinner and 100 mg at two snacks during the day.
I don't shun all prepackaged food. I don't have the time or energy to cook everything from scratch. If you keep your servings accurate, you can use some convenience foods as a complement to low sodium options to create meals. Cheese is a great example. If you don't drown your food in it, it can add flavor and saltiness to meals. By the way, Swiss is a wonderful low sodium alternative.
When looking at sodium content in foods, what surprised me the most was the amount of sodium in sweet products. Several examples are pancake mix, instant pudding mix and cake mixes all have well over 400 mg of sodium per serving.
Hope this helps. - 11/18/2011 10:32:27 AM
ness-cafe.com
/salt.htm
Refined Salt: White Poison - The problem with salt is not the salt itself but the condition of the salt we eat! Our regular table salt no longer has anything in common with the original crystal salt. Salt now a day is mainly sodium chloride and not salt. With the advent of industrial development, our natural salt was "chemically cleaned" and reduced only to sodium and chloride. Major producing companies dry their salt in huge kilns with temperatures reaching 1200 degrees F, changing he salt's chemical structure, which in turn adversely affects the human body. The common table salt we use for cooking has only 2 or 3 chemical elements. The seawater has 84 chemical elements. For our body to be healthy we need all those elements. When we use the common salt, we are in deficit of 81 elements which means we are somehow contributing to becoming weaker, imbalanced and more susceptible to diseases. Use the seawater salt. - 9/20/2011 8:11:26 AM
There is good information with citations here:
http://www.heal
thiertalk.com
/low-salt-die
t-revisited-f
ound-increase-mortality-4436
http://www.heal
thiertalk.com
/why-eating-m
ore-salt-may-
be-good-you-4346
- 9/18/2011 1:27:04 PM