The new 2010 Dietary Guidelines recommend that the average healthy American eat no more than 1500mg of sodium per day. For people with risk factors such as those listed above the recommendation may be even less.
Sodium does play an important role in our health. It helps to regulate the fluid balance in our bodies and plays a role in muscle contraction and nerve function; so we do need some sodium in our diet. The problem is that most Americans eat 6 times more than the amount of sodium they actually need per day.
Like I used to mistakenly believe, you may be thinking, “I don’t salt my food at the table, so this doesn’t apply to me.” But before you decide to rule out the need to watch your sodium intake, listen to this. Using table salt only accounts for about 10% of Americans’ sodium intake, 75% comes from packaged and processed foods or restaurant foods. Foods such as canned soups, frozen dinners, sauces or sauce mixes, seasonings, snack foods, pickled foods, and deli meats are all particularly bad culprits. Mexican, Chinese, and fast foods are some of the worst when in comes to dining out. So with all these foods high in sodium how do you make good choices?
Obviously by choosing less processed foods and eating out less often, you will lower your sodium consumption. However to make your quest to decrease your sodium intake a little easier, here are the rules of thumb that I share with my clients to help them pick out foods that are lower in sodium.
- First, when looking at a nutrition facts label, find sodium, then look over in the % daily value column. You want the sodium to be 15% or less for a single serving. If it is a whole meal, such as a frozen dinner, you want the sodium to be less than 35% daily value (since if you have 3 meals per day, this would be about 1/3 of your daily value).
- Another way to test the amount of sodium in your food is to again look at the nutrition facts label and if the number of calories is less than the number of sodium mg’s, then your food is probably too high in sodium and you should look for a lower sodium alternative.
- Be sure to look at the ingredient list. Monosodium glutamate, disodium phosphate, sodium bisulfate, brine, soy sauce, sodium alginate, and sodium benzoate are all words that mean sodium. The more of these words listed in the ingredient list, the more sodium the product has.
Use these rules of thumb when choosing foods and you will be making smarter sodium choices in no time!
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