Salt Lurks Everywhere, it Can’t be That Bad, Can it?
Did you know…77% of the sodium in many of our diets comes from processed & restaurant food! Only 12% of the sodium most of us consumes is naturally found in foods and we only add ~10% of the sodium we eat while cooking or at the table.
Just to clarify, salt is sodium chloride.
The average Canadian consumes 3,400mg sodium daily; Health Canada recommends the a healthy adult doesn’t eat more than 1,500mg of it! It’s very easy to over consume this mineral, 1 teaspoon salt = 2,300mg of sodium – more than what we should eat in a day.
You Can Often Find Salt Where you Least Suspect it!
Salt enhances flavour and increases a product’s shelf life so food manufacturers love it! Many foods that you’d least suspect, products that aren’t even savoury, contain large amounts of sodium.
You can find salt in a lot of sweet foods.
Look at the salt content in these items:
- Soy sauce = 1000mg / tablespoon!
- Campbell’s Mushroom Soup = 870mg / ½ cup!
- 2 Ham & Pineapple McCain pizza slices = 700mg sodium
- Vegetable juice = up to 700mg / cup
- Hot dog = 700mg sodium
- Ragu Chunky Tomato, Garlic & Onion pasta sauce = 510mg sodium / ½ cup
- Tim Hortons Chocolate Chip Muffin = 420mg sodium
If you consume any of the items regularly, it’s easy to quickly surpass the amount of sodium you should be having in a full day, in only one meal.
There are a lot of Risks to a Diet High in Salt.
Here are a few of the major issues with salt:
- It increases blood volume by forcing the body to hold on to extra water. This stressor can lead to cardiovascular disease and/or high blood pressure.
- This mineral forces the kidneys & heart to work harder, causing internal stress.
- It can lead to kidney stones or kidney disease.
- Consuming too much sodium can result in bone loss, causing osteoporosis, as salt leaches calcium from our bones.
- It’s been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
We Do Need a Little Sodium in our Diets.
- Salt is an electrolyte and a mineral.
- Sodium and potassium are opposites; they both help regulate our blood pressure.
- Sodium attracts & holds water, so it helps maintain the liquid portion of our blood.
- Consuming too little of it can lead to hyponatremia, which causes nausea, headaches, confusion, fatigue and weakness.
- It helps transmit information along our nerve and muscle cells.
- We can get the sodium we need, often through eating a healthy diet filled with whole foods. There’s not often a need to add salt to anything we eat.
Try these 7 tips to Limit your Salt:
- Educate yourself; read the Nutrition Facts table and ingredients lists.
- Track how much you currently consume in a day (you may be surprised / horrified!).
- Minimize processed foods (especially frozen dinners).
- Don’t cook with it, use spices & herbs to add flavour.
- Buy ‘sodium reduced’ variants.
- Look for the Health Check™ symbol; foods with this symbol have limited salt.
- Drink 2L+ of water daily; this will help keep your blood levels in check.
Too much salt can be harmful to your health.
To Sum it Up…
In summary, we do need a small amount of sodium in our diets to stay balanced. However, consuming more than the recommended 1,500mg of it has been linked to an increase in blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and osteoporosis and more. Follow the 7 tips above, to limit your sodium intake today!