Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night multiple times dying of thirst? Maybe your meal the night before was a little too salty.
Americans love salt. It was so valuable long ago that, in many cultures, it was used as a form of currency, and while it may not be as valuable today, its popularity has not waned. That’s why there’s a shaker full of it on almost every family and restaurant table in the country. But are we consuming too much of it?
The answer is a definite “yes”, way too much of it. Sodium is in almost everything we consume. It’s in chips, canned vegetables and soups, and frozen dinners. It’s even in things we don’t think of containing salt, like cakes, sodas, and cereals. We often buy foods that are already loaded with it, and then we top it of with more. However, about a third of the sodium we intake was already in the foods to begin with.
A teaspoon of salt contains about 2,300 milligrams of sodium, and the amount recommended by most organizations is between 1,500 to 2,400 milligrams a day. It’s easy to consume twice as much per day, and many Americans do so, averaging from 2,500 to 5,000 milligrams a day. Here is the sodium content for some food items that could make up the meals for an American over the course of a day:
If you consumed the items on this list, your sodium intake for the day would total 3,466 milligrams, well over the recommended amount. And don’t be fooled by foods that seem healthier. If you replaced the McDonalds Big Mac at 1040 milligrams with a McDonalds grilled chicken club, your sodium intake would increase by 690 milligrams to 1720 milligrams, and if you decided your fries needed an extra packet of salt, you would be adding an extra 270 milligrams.
So just why is sodium so bad for us? We do need it in our diets to help maintain the right balance of fluid in our bodies, transmit nerve impulses, and influence the contraction and relaxation of muscles. However, consuming too much of it can result in health problems. The kidneys usually eliminate excess sodium through urination, but when too much is consumed, the kidneys cannot eliminate all of it. It then accumulates in the blood, increasing the volume of the blood. This makes the heart have to worker harder to pump the blood throughout your body, resulting in high blood pressure, which increases the chance of developing heart disease or having a stroke.
Some people, such as the elderly or people who already suffer from high blood pressure or kidney disease, may be more sensitive to sodium and should aim for the lower recommended range (1,500 milligrams a day) of intake.
But how can we limit our intake of sodium? Reading food labels is a good start. Almost all packaged foods list the amount of sodium in them, so you can read the label and make sure the amount in the product is not outrageous. If you want to know the sodium content of many products, including restaurant items, CalorieKing.com has a searchable database of the nutritional information of thousands of foods. Many products also offer low-sodium versions of their products.
Avoid or limit condiments like ketchup, mustard, and salad dressing as much as possible, as all contain high levels of sodium. Replace canned vegetables in recipes with fresh ones, as many canned foods contain high levels of sodium. Instead of adding salt to recipes, try other spices for flavor. There are a large variety of spices available, and many of them, such as basil, cayenne pepper, ginger, rosemary, sage, and dill, have added health benefits and provide a wide range of flavors.While it is difficult to avoid such large quantities of sodium in our diets with so many over-processed, over-salted foods available, by taking a little extra time to read labels and by being more aware of what we’re eating, we can avoid serious health problems (and being extremely thirsty).
