Cornerstone Family Practice

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Surrender the Salt!

We all need sodium. Among other things, sodium helps you maintain fluid balance and ensures proper muscle contraction. However, too much sodium can significantly contribute to hypertension (high blood pressure) by increasing the amount of fluid in your body and forcing your heart to work harder to push this greater volume through your arteries. Hypertension has been referred to as the “silent killer” because the negative consequences of high blood pressure: kidney disease, loss of vision and heart and artery damage often go undetected until it is too late.

How Much is Too Much?
The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that healthy adults consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium a day and less than1,500 mg of sodium a day if you’re middle-aged or older, black, or have high blood pressure, kidney disease or diabetes. But what does 2,300 mg (or 1,500mg) of sodium look like? Well, one teaspoon of salt has about 2,300 mg of sodium, one tablespoon of soy sauce has 1000 mg of sodium and one shake of the salt shaker has about 200 mg of sodium. However it’s not really the salt that we add to our food that’s the main culprit. Most of the sodium in our diet comes from eating processed foods. These foods are typically high in salt (combination of sodium and chloride) and other additives that contain sodium that are used to increase shelf life and enhance flavor.

Foods Containing Sodium
Taste alone may not tell you which foods are high in sodium. For example, you may not think a bagel tastes salty, but a typical 4-inch (10-centimeter) oat-bran bagel has about 532 mg of sodium. So how can you tell which foods are high in sodium? Read food labels. The Nutrition Facts label found on most packaged and processed foods lists the amount of sodium in each serving. Food packaging also lists whether the ingredients include salt or sodium-containing compounds, such as:
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• Disodium phosphate
• Sodium alginate
• Sodium nitrate or nitrite

Reading Packages: Becoming Sodium Savvy
Food manufacturers know that consumers are trying to reduce the sodium in their diets and are catering to them by adding sodium-related terms to their packaging.

Here is what they mean:
• Sodium-free or salt-free. Each serving in this product contains less than 5 mg of sodium.
• Very low-sodium. Each serving contains 35 mg of sodium or less.
• Low-sodium. Each serving contains 140 mg of sodium or less.
• Reduced or less sodium. The product contains at least 25 percent less sodium than the regular version.
• Lite or light in sodium. The sodium content has been reduced by at least 50 percent from the regular version.
• Unsalted or no salt added. No salt is added during processing of a food that normally contains salt.

The simplest way to reduce the amount of sodium you consume is to avoid foods that contain more than 200 mg of sodium per serving.

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