Foods That Break the Salt Bank
By Sara Butler
If you're trying to watch how much salt you have per day, then good for you. Sodium intake is an important thing to keep an eye on for a few reasons. The first is that too much salt can be bad for your overall health and wellness. Second, getting too much salt is an incredibly easy thing to do. In fact, there are several foods that are salt busters in your diet that you may not even realize. Here are some high sodium foods that may be sabotaging your sodium intake.
Soup
Soup, in almost any form but homemade where you control the ingredients, is very high in salt. You can find low-sodium varieties on the shelves at your local market, but even those can have too much salt to fit neatly into a healthy diet.
You have to be on the lookout for soups that have added sodium as well as ingredients such as MSG that also add a salty flavor. One serving of canned soup can provide you with 700 of the 2,300 mg of sodium you're supposed to have each day. As you can see, it can be easy to go overboard.
Cottage Cheese
Cottage cheese is seen as a healthy food and while it is a good source of protein and calcium, it's also high in salt. Most brands of cottage cheese have about 350 mg of sodium per serving. It's not common to find lower-sodium versions of cottage cheese either since it is added to help preserve the product and make the texture palatable.
Salad Dressing
Salads are good for you, right? Well, yes -- and no. Salads can easily veer off the healthy tracks into high sodium territory without you even realizing it and that's thanks to salad dressings. Salad dressings often contain added salt as well as additives that enhance the flavor but add sodium to the plate, too.
On average, salad dressing has about 300 mg of sodium in one 2 tablespoon serving. So, it can really add up if you aren't measuring how much dressing you put on your salad.
Canned Vegetables
Another food that is often seen as healthy that can pack quite the sodium punch is canned vegetables. Often, a half cup of canned vegetables can have over 300 mg of sodium. Fortunately, you can combat this by rinsing canned vegetables off before you eat them. This can cut the sodium content by up to 20 percent. Opting for plain frozen vegetables is a good alternative, too.
Make sure to read the nutrition label of any food you eat so that you can understand how much sodium you're actually getting.
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Fontana, Calif.