The salt we didn't even know was there

With the majority of salt we consume coming from packaged food, do check the label to monitor how much you are eating. — TNS

A patient with diabetes and heart disease told me he hardly uses salt.

“I do buy more convenience foods since my wife died though,” he continued.

That’s an issue, according to new guidance to food manufacturers from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Citing that more than 70% of the sodium we ingest resides in packaged or restaurant foods – before we ever pick up the salt shaker – the US FDA recently asked food processors to gradually reduce the amount of sodium in their products.

(Note: Salt is a combination of sodium and chloride. It’s the sodium part of this popular seasoning we’re discussing now.)

Sodium is not all bad.

It enhances flavours and helps preserve food from spoilage.

And it’s an essential nutrient for the body to maintain the right balance of fluids.

It’s our current obsession with excess salt that has health experts worried.

Diseases like osteoporosis (excess sodium can leach calcium from the bones) and high blood pressure are all related to a diet too high in sodium.

And high blood pressure is nothing to ignore, says the American Heart Association (AHA).

Too much sodium pulls extra water into the blood, which makes the heart work harder to pump nutrients and oxygen through the body.

Like a garden hose under pressure, over time, the walls of blood vessels can stretch and get damaged.

This, says the AHA, can lead to a stroke or other diseases of the heart.

An adequate intake of sodium is 1,500mg a day for anyone over the age of 19, says the US National Academy of Sciences.

Yet, we Americans typically consume more than double that amount – an estimated 3,400mg.

The current goal of the US FDA and Dietary Guidelines for Americans is somewhere in the middle: no more than 2,300mg a day.

So... until food companies figure out how to cut sodium in their products, we need to be vigilant about what we throw into our grocery carts.

Packaged and convenience foods are a good place to start, even those we tend to think of as “healthy”.

Take a look at meat substitutes, for example.

Compared to 75mg of sodium in a four-ounce (113g) serving of real ground beef, the Beyond Burger and other similar products has more than five times as much sodium: 390mg.

Remember this when you’re comparing food labels: According to the US FDA, a food is consider “low sodium” if it contains no more than 140mg of sodium per serving.

“Reduced sodium” means it has at least a third less sodium than the original product.

Checked your breakfast cereal lately?

The only one that I know of that has no sodium is good ol’ Shredded Wheat, with this simple ingredient label: whole grain wheat.

Hopefully, other products will soon improve their sodium profile. – By Barbara Intermill/Monterey Herald/Tribune News Service

Barbara Intermill (nee Quinn) is a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator in the United States.