If you’ve been following me along, you’ve heard me complain a few times this past week about salt content in prepared and packaged food. It has long been purported that sodium intake can contribute to hyper tension and ultimately affect hearth health and lead to all kinds of nightmares like strokes and heart attacks. The American Heart Association suggests that people limit their sodium intake to 2300-3000 mg a day. Anyone suffering from hypertension is likely (given a pill and) asked to limit the amount of salt they eat to help reverse these conditions. What most people don’t realize however is that it’s not the salt shaker on the table that you need to be wary of. Sodium is added to literally every food you buy that comes in a bag, can, box or bottle, so here’s what you need to know.
Maybe you get the nutrition issue in general, so you think, it’s ok! When I eat out, I eat the sensible meals with proper portions. To this end some restaurants even help with new health-conscious menus. Chili’s bar and grill deserves a pat on the back for offering diners what it calls the “Guiltless” menu – a wide variety of items for which you can view the calorie and fat content to help make a wiser choice. But the guilt may set in on your next trip to the doctor, when you check your blood pressure. Here’s part of the nutritional breakdown you won’t see on the menu:
Chili’s Guiltless Grill Chicken Platter
2,780 mg sodium
590 calories
85 g carbohydrates
2780 mg of sodium! That’s more sodium than some of the non-guiltless items on the menu that are breaded and fried. This meal alone completes your daily recommended value of sodium intake. Chili’s is not alone here, and I only pick on them because of my recent visit, which was tasty, but left me parched for a day after eating there, and almost 2 lbs heavier overnight. Sorry Chili’s, if it makes you feel any better, Romano’s Macaroni Grill Chicken Portobello dish has 7,300 mg sodium, though in fairness, they’re not claiming it’s the healthy option.
It’s no wonder that people simply don’t know how to manage their sodium intake. A recent study I mentioned recently found that in Texas, the closer you live to a fast food restaurant, the higher the risk of stroke you have. They didn’t quite claim that the proximity was causing the stroke incident rates. It was more of a ‘just sayin!’ type finding. But it does give pause.
It goes beyond restaurant food. Next time you buy something as innocuous as tomato juice, take a look at the sodium content. It shows up in breakfast cereal, cottage cheese, deli meats, soups (these are one of the worst offenders!), and most offensively, in just about all products marketed as low-fat or healthy.
It has been purported that reducing the amount of salt in prepared and packaged food, could save upwards of 150,000 lives a year. The commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene knows all of this information and is determined to do something about it. In what has become a pretty controversial topic, Dr. Thomas R. Friedman is attempting to encourage manufacturers of packaged food as well as restaurants to cut their sodium content 50% in the next 15 years.
You may know Dr. Friedman’s name from his recent victories over trans fat, calories, and smoking in New York, so he’s no stranger to controversy, but many are arguing that the salt reduction is not necessary. While salt consumption does contribute to heart and health issues, some believe that this is only true of people that have a sensitivy to sodium, and that others have much better tolerances.
I think this is total crap. This is like saying that not every smoker or person exposed to second hand smoke dies of cancer, so it’s unfair to ban smoking in public places. The majority of the population eats more salt than is suggested, and they don’t even know it. If people are certain they’re unaffected by sodium and want to add salt to their food, then they can thank Mr. Morton, who about 100 years ago, put a shaker on the table just for you. The rest of us would like a little help in getting back to more natural foods that haven’t been altered just so that someone can make more money (they’re tastier and last longer after all) .
So what can you do? Read your nutrition labels. Sodium intake should be about 500 mg or less for each meal, assuming you eat around 4-6 moderate sized meals a day. Be careful with portion sizes as they can be confusing and misleading as well. A can of soup typically has 2-3 servings, and 500-1000 mg of sodium per serving. So that whole can? Heart attack city. If you’re going to eat a meal you know is high in sodium, try and balance it by making sure you’re eating some veggies that are clean.
There’s good news and there’s bad news. If you cook at home, and watch what you buy, you can greatly reduce your sodium intake. At first it will be dramatic in taste, but after only a couple days you will quickly adapt to what food tastes like without all kinds of crap added in. The bad news is that since you’ll quickly adapt, eating out becomes a challenge and most meals you find will make your lips pucker and wish you’d grilled something at home.
Not convinced there’s an issue? Write down the sodium content of everything you eat for a day. If it’s over 3000 mgs, cut it in half for the next day, and see how you feel.
Further Reading:
New York Times: Throwing the Book at Salt
Is a burger better for you than stir-fry?
American Health Association Reading: