How Much Is Too Much Salt In Your Diet?

DIET AND FITNESS:

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH SALT?
(Reduce Salt to Lower Your Blood Pressure)

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In our health conscious world, we often hear that we
need to lower our salt intake. Too much salt ---sodium--
increases your risk of developing high blood pressure.
This is in turn increases your risk of heart disease.
Doctors often recommend to patients exhibiting the first
signs of so-called, pre-high blood pressure syndrome, or
pre-hypertensive syndrome, to limit their salt intake to
as little as possible.

But how low should you go? What is the daily
recommended stopping point?

It depends on whom you ask. Some sources, such as the
American Heart Association, cap our daily salt intake at
2.3 grams. Others, such as The University of
Connecticut’s College of Agriculture and Natural
Resources, caps the limit at 3 grams.

Most Americans consume between 6 and 18 grams of salt
each day. That’s between 3 and 7 times more than the
recommended limits.

What’s a gram? Pick up any food --- say a can of Diet
Sprite -- and you will find that the salt intake is not
listed in “grams” but in “mg”, ---milligrams. To convert
mgs to grams, multiply by 1000. A 11.27 ounce can of
Diet Sprite Zero contains 35 mgs. Since you would need
to consume 1000 mgs to equal 1 gram, if you consume
the can of Sprite, you would have 2265 mgs left to
“spend” in the day’s salt budget.

It’s easy to go over your daily salt budget. The body
really only needs about 200 mgs of salt per day. Yet, a
single teaspoon of salt contains 2000 mgs. Processed
foods often contain massive amounts of salt. A single
tablespoon of soy sauce, added often to Chinese take-out
food, has 1,030 mgs of sodium. So, you may be asking
"how much salt is in my food"?

The only way to be sure what you’re ingesting is to read,
read, read the labels. Here is a list of milligrams of
sodium found in common foods (See an expanded list):

Food                          Amount of Sodium in mg
3 oz. chicken                      Less than 90
1 whole egg                        65
1 cup nonfat milk                  125
1 oz. cheddar cheese              175
1 Tbsp. soy sauce                  1,030
1 cup canned soup                   600 to 1,300
Fried chicken dinner,
2 pieces chicken, mashed
Potatoes, cole slaw                   1800
2 hot dogs                            1200
Corn chips (just 20 chips)            295
Most canned vegetables              200-400
1 oz. cheddar cheese                 175
Fresh fruits                            0 or very little
Fresh vegetables                      0 or very little

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