Sodium & You: The Nitty Gritty on Salt & Its Friends

An article by Joanna    3 Comments

Lately, while investigating food for my weekly #foodtruth contribution to @bookieboo and #Mamavation, I’ve been feeling grateful that I was awake during high school chemistry. In actuality, it was one of my favorite classes because chemistry feels so definite, so accurate – the perfectionist in me craves that kind of exact rightness. This week’s discussion stems from Leah’s confessional vlog of last week – if you haven’t seen it yet, seriously stop what you’re doing and go watch it. She is amazing, putting herself out there, completely sincere and also happened to mention sodium. With my brain already running to chemistry, and her vlog stuck in my head, voila - a post about sodium!

What is Salt? What is Sodium?
It’s fairly common when researching healthy eating habits to see talk about salt intake – especially if you are researching for someone who has had high blood pressure problems (like my husband). Salt is a chemical compound called Sodium Chloride (NaCl) which is really interesting to study in physics and chemistry. Sodium is an essential nutrient that our bodies need and use to maintain health, and is naturally occuring in foods. We use salt to preserve and process our foods, which greatly increases our sodium levels. Ingredients like “salt”, “soda”, “sodium”, “sodium bicarbonate” and “Na” are all sodium products that, if added to or part of our foods, raise our sodium levels.

Thanks to the pre-med training that I never finished, I do have some knowledge of how the body uses sodium – and I think it’s as important for us to know why we need a nutrient as to know how much of that nutrient we need. Sodium is an electrolyte, which our bodies use to maintain our health and function on a cellular level with chemical reactions. Sodium regulates the amount of water in our bodies so that we don’t drown in our own fluid. Our bodies use sodium to transfer electricity in the form of electrical impulses – it forms how our nerves work, our muscles work, even our brain cells. Too little sodium can be as harmful as too much sodium.

How Much Sodium Is Enough?
There are a couple of different guidelines for our sodium intake. From the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, it is recommended that adults should consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. Special recommendations for people with hypertension, blacks, and those adults middle-aged and over advice this group to “consume no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day, and meet the potassium recommendation (4,700 mg/day) with food.” The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 change these guidelines – “because these latter groups [people with hypertension, blacks and adults middle-aged or older] together now comprise nearly 70 percent of US adults, the goal should be 1,500 mg per day for the general population.” It further recommends that the change be done gradually, to taper from 2,300 mg of sodium per day to the new 1,500 mg recommendation.

How does your sodium measure up to the old guidelines? To the new guidelines? For a quick way to evaluate your sodium intake, check out this quiz from Discovery Health.

Sodium Labeling
The FDA ruled in 2005 that a food can bear the label “healthy” if the sodium in it is restricted – “sodium level requirements for all food categories, including individual foods (480 milligrams (mg)) and meals and main dishes (600 mg)”. In April 2010, the FDA released a statement in response to an article published in the Washington Post which indicated the FDA was or may be regulating sodium in food. The Instiute of Medicine (IOM) released a report answering a query from Congress in 2008 which provided strategies for the nation to reduce our unhealthy levels of sodium intake as Americans. On the nutrition labels, you will see the %DV or Percent Daily Value listed for the sodium content – that percentage is based off a 2,000 calorie diet, and 2,400 mg of sodium per day for adults and children more than 4 years of age. Note – this does not include pregnant and lactating women.

How to Lower Your Salt Intake
Make sure you are sitting down now, not eating or drinking anything, because I guarantee this next number is going to shock you. 1,500 mg of sodium – the new daily recommendation - can be found in… 3/4 tsp of salt. That’s right, I said 3/4 of a teaspoon. I’ll give you a minute so you can  pick your jaw back up off the ground and wipe your monitor off if you were in mid-sip when you read that. The very first step in lowering your salt intake is to stop adding it. Take your salt shaker and move it to a hard-to-reach and easily-forgotten spot. You can reach your daily recommended value of sodium without picking up the shaker by eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Tuna, peanut butter, even tap water all have sodium – you don’t need to add more! Check out this nifty table of sodium contents and comparisons in food. If you need even more ideas on how to cut back on salt, visit the FDA for some tips.

Go Out and De-Salt
Wow, did you catch all that? What a lot of information on such a wee ingredient in our daily lives. Can you give up your salt shaker? I want to challenge each and every one of you to put away your salt shaker for a week. We did at my house, and after the initial whining period, we didn’t miss it – your food doesn’t taste exactly the way it did before, but better because you are going to taste more of its natural flavor. Give  it a try, it can’t hurt!

Here are some additional references I used that are not linked above.
http://www.medicinenet.com/electrolytes/article.htm
http://www.saltinstitute.org/
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sea-salt/AN01142
http://www.heartcheckmark.biz/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4708

So my #Mamavation Sistas, I hope this was educational for you, and that you’ll take the Saltless Challenge. Until next week, this is the #FoodTruth Diva, signing off.