Most people know that they should be watching their intake of salt, but how many of them know what they should be watching for?
Ideally we should be keeping our intake of sodium to less than 2300 mg per day, less than 1500 mg if you have high blood pressure or have a family history of it. Do you know what that looks like? One teaspoon, 15 ml, per day – that’s it.
Now, one teaspoon is actually quite a bit of salt. Very few people would add that much from the shaker to their food. The major culprits are processed foods and fast foods. Enter label reading.
To keep your levels down, try to keep main meals at less than 500mg and your snacks at less than 200 mg. Manageable with packaged foods, but very hard with fast foods.
A Wheat Carrot muffin from Tim’s has 660 mg of sodium. A Mandarin Chicken Salad from Wendy’s has just over 1200 mg.
Do yourself a big favour – pack your lunch. If you can’t, at least check out the nutritional guides on-line so that you don’t eat what you think is a healthy option only to find out later that it wasn’t.
Yours in Health,
Kerri Fullerton ND