Do you know what your eating?  Do you know it’s origin?  Do you know what your food is made up of?  Where do those flavors come from?  If you can’t answer these questions then you should reconsider your next meal.  Artificial sweeteners and sugar have been the major topic of flavorings lately but now it’s salt’s turn.  Salt is an easy way to add flavor and often times is used in place of other flavoring ingredients.  The current recommendation for salt intake is 1,500 mg.  The average American consumes 3,500 mg of sodium daily (1).

 

Most of the salt intake can be controlled when preparing the foods from home.  Here are a few rules of thumb to help increase your knowledge of the use of salt and to avoid excessive salt intake.

 

1) Locked & Loaded – Assume anything in a can is loaded with sodium.  This includes canned vegetables, soups, broth etc.  Buying frozen vegetables are a good alternative to the canned variety and look for soups and broth that are low or no sodium and add salt yourself.

 

2) Killing You Slowly – The salt content in fast foods and restaurants is just wretched.  Here are some examples of how much salt is used.  The restaurants I picked are at random and to find out my opinion click here.  These values are taken straight from the restaurants nutrition website.

 

Chicago Classic Pizza from Uno’s –  1,550 mg of sodium per serving.  Individual has 3 servings.  Regular has 6.  You can do the math.

 

Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese from McDonald’s  1,190 mg of sodium.  Better than the pizza, but still a lot.

 

So, you may be saying what about a sit down, out to dinner, or maybe date place?  Let’s take a look at some more.

 

Romano’s Macaroni GrillWhole wheat fettuccine (1,340 mg), fettuccine alfredo with chicken (2,060), roasted chicken and arugula flatbread (2,050).  Two of these you would think would be healthy picks.

 

3) Spice of Life – Adding spices such as cinnamon, cumin, curry, oregano, basil and parsley will help add flavor to your dishes without adding extra salt.

 

For more information on the salt content of these spices and other foods click here and look for the second link.  If you are still uncertain about how to clean up your act when it comes to nutrition we can help.

1) Smith, Michael. (2011).  Salt Study Discounts Link to Hypertension.  MedPage Today.  Retrieved from http://goo.gl/agUW4.
2) Photo courtesy of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944835/
Brent

Brent

President, Personal Training Manager at Body By Brent LLC
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