How do you escape this stuff??? I just did an "analyze recipe" online of what I thought was my healthy lunch (mushrooms, spinach, diced tomatoes, a little pasta and parmesan cheese), and the sodium was over 1500mg! I was hoping to have a turkey burger tonight, but that's going to be another 1000mg of sodium. Way over the daily limit! What can you eat and not get this much sodium? Nothing but vegetables?
I don't really worry about sodium. Unless a person has sodium sensitive hypertension or some other reason to really watch sodium, I don't really think it's a big deal. As long as your water intake is decent as to offset any accompanied water retention, I wouldn't sweat it!
Well I don't escape it - I have no problem with salt and, quite the contrary, focus on getting adequate salt, magnesium, and potassium each day.
That said, the way to avoid *excess* sodium is to avoid prepackaged, processed food. Mixes, canned products, any entree or shelf stable food... They've (almost) all been loaded up with salt to increase to shelf life and give it palatability after the nutrients have been leached out. It's a consequence of demanding convenience products.
With the exception of some cheeses and cured products like olives and charcuterie, whole foods diets are quite low in sodium compared to the standard American diet. I eat half the amount of sodium I used to on my diet, just by changing up how much I'm making from scratch as opposed to buying pre-made. Even on the same calorie level, my fiber has gone up and sodium has gone down. That's no coincidence, it relates directly to the quality and nutritional density of my food.
That's not to say processed/packaged foods don't have their place, but if sodium is your concern for some reason, that is the quickest way to reduce it.
DIY, make your own food is good in terms of keeping sodium in check. Not much sodium in eggs, meat, peanut butter, yogurt, vegetables, fruit, stuff like that...it's when you get into using sauces and preserved/frozen premade stuff that it adds up.
I don't worry toooooo much about it but I just hate feeling like I have to drink 15 glasses of water to offset the "sausage fingers" feeling from an overly salty meal!
Oh that's nothing. My Dad was diagnosed with high blood pressure, so w've been making good use of my skill of scouring restaurant menus online. One of the Famous Dave's burgers have over 5,000mg of sodium!!
Home-made food is your best bet, so long as you skip the salt that always seems to be in recipes...
Parmesan cheese always tastes really salty to me... But yummy!
It's funny; I had surgery last winter and all my friends took turns bringing dinner for 2 weeks. My boys were amazed by how tasty everyone's food was... It was the salt!
So....so....SODIUM!
