No wonder it is so hard to lower sodium levels in your diet. I was looking at the sandwhich I eat every day for lunch. It's nothing special, just a regular ham (2 slices) and cheese (1 slice American) sandwhich on whole wheat. Well each slice of ham contains a whopping 320 mg of sodium. The cheese contains another 250 mg and each slice of bread contains 200 mg. In one small meal I've just had 55% of the sodium I should have in a day (RDA of less than 2400 mg).
Ok, so after the sandwhich I still have about 1070 mg left in my daily allotment of sodium. The vitamin water i drink in the morning has either 15 mg or 100 mg depending on the flavor. Guess which one I'm going to pick up from now on? And my morning smoothie has 35 mg of sodium if I remember correctly. So that leaves me at about 1000 mg left. The almonds I have throughout the day knock off another 170 mg leaving me with a 830 mg sodium leeway for dinner and any other snacks I have.
So dinner comes along and let's say I decide to have a bag of Contessa Orange Chicken, which is very good by the way. There are 2.5 servings per bag and each serving contains about…1100 mg of sodium. D'oh! Even if I have only one serving I'd be over for the day. Unfortunately, all of the other Contessa pre-made meals have 2.5 to 3 servings and 900+ mg of sodium per serving.
So. Premade meals are out. How about my favorite salmon? It has only 170 mg of sodium bringing me down to 660 mg left. Now if I add 1 serving of canned carrots (~270 mg) and 1 serving of canned asparagus (~ 370 mg) I'll eek in my daily limit and have 20 mg to spare. Good right? Well not so fast. If I eat all of that I will be around 1300 to 1500 calories. That's 400 to 600 below my goal. And since losing weight isn't my goal, I need to add more calories than that.
So now what? Well one thing I've done so far is to remove 1 slice of ham from the daily sandwhich. That cuts 320 mg of sodium out of my diet and only removes 30 calories. I'm also going to look for some lower sodium cheese. If I can find some low sodium cheese that I like that will help a bit. Also, I need to buy fresh veggies from now on and save the canned foods for an emergency such as long term unemployment.
As far as sodium goes, if I find some lower sodium alternatives to my current foods, replace canned veggies with fresh veggies and limit or remove processed foods from my diet, I should be able to stay within a 2400 mg limit and still add more calories to meet my goals. I might end up buying a book like this, American Heart Association Low-Salt Cookbook, 3rd Edition: A Complete Guide to Reducing Sodium and Fat in Your Diet
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I found a sodium quiz on the consumer reports site!
http://www.consumerreports.org/health/healthy-living/diet-nutrition/diets-dieting/sodium-in-food/sodium-quiz/sodium-quiz.htm
I got 6 right and 6 wrong.
If I were a body of water, I would be Salt Lake. However in the last month and a half I have monitored my sodium intake and cut back on sugary and fried foods. I have lost 30 pounds from 208 to 178.
I found a very good article that details the balance between sodium and potassium very well.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/osteoporosis/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100238578>1=31038
Way to go for noticing your sodium intake! I think it sort of goes unmonitored because it doesn't contain any calories, and with so many people geared toward weight loss, if a food is low-cal then it's percieved as A-OK!
I'm starting a low-sodium diet (less than 2,000mg per day) as prescribed by my doctor, and blogging about it! If you know of any other low-sodium resources, send them my way! I'm going to go check out that Consumer Reports quiz!
Cheers!
Sodium is a bit of a pain to cut back on since it is in everything! I posted a low sodiuim recipe site in the comments of your blog for you: http://dontsalt.blogspot.com/