When I first saw the headline in My Google Reader I thought, haven’t we know this for 25 years? But then again if 25 years later we are still eating too much salt, I guess the stories still need to be written. Here is a link to the CDC article on sodium intake that caught my attention. And here is a link a Food Consumer summary of the CDC report on salt intake. It really is worth reading!
What can be done to reduce your salt intake? Well, the number one thing is to reduce your intake of processed foods. Probably 70 or 80% if the salt the average person consumes comes from processed foods. Prepare more of your own food and you will consume less salt. By preparing more of your food, you will also consume fewer preservatives and other chemicals. You will season to your taste and use many other seasonings that will allow you to drastically reduce your use of salt.
Of course, there are some deniers that claim the levels of salt we are being warned about are not actually bad for you. But these days there are deniers for every science research study published. As usual, it is difficult to know exactly what the truth is. I do know this though, prepare more of your own food and you will be healthier, salt or no salt.
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hey Will,
I’ve never acquired a taste for salt, which is why one would be hard pressed to find a salt shaker in our house. It stuns me when I see people at a restaurant grab a shaker and drown their entire plate in salt! Yuck…
Now if only I’d never taken that first sip of coffee many years ago…
That said, I heartily agree with your statement that people (who eat a lot of processed food) should eat less processed food… a lot less!
Good post. Steve
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I think I remember you mentioning before that you use almost no salt. Quite the achievement Steve. I do use it but as I prepare almost all of my food, I have a lot of control of my salt intake. Not perfect, but better than most, I guess. I drink almost no coffee though!
My dad is one of those people who drowns his food in salt. I count myself lucky as I don’t really add extra salt to most of my food, and avoid processed food as much as possible. It definitely has made a difference.
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I stopped adding salt to my food in my early 20’s & still never add salt during cooking or at the table. I always figured there was enough natural salt in our food & more than enough in processed food. If I eat anything too salty I end u coughing like mad from the taste of it
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Will you wrote post about salt the other time, and I really took your recommendation about the sea salt. I noticed that I had to put more than the regular one. Well, the result is, we use salt but not much. I even have Matthew on the low salt diet, and whenever we eat something salty, he does not like it very much. Which is good, same with sweet stuff, but he likes his chocolate. After all he likes his food even if it is not salty enough. Anna
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