With a Grain of Salt

Sodium Chloride.  A combination of an explosively reactive metal with a corrosively poisonous gas that joins in ionic bonding to make delicious salt.

Salt is good stuff.  It's one of the things we can readily identify by taste because it's hardwired into our brains driving us to lap the stuff up when we come across it.  It's a critical substance needed for all kinds of bodily processes.  We need it to survive.  Trouble is...too much can kill you just as well.  Salt has a tendency to raise blood pressure and when the pressure on the arteries and vessels is consistently high year after year, something will eventually blow.  That's usually manifested as a stroke or heart attack.  So the sound medical advice is to cut back on salt intake.

Easier said than done.

Salt is friggin everywhere!  Meat and dairy is loaded with it naturally.  Any processed food, which is everything in the grocery store south of the produce aisle, has tons of salt....and I mean tons.  An example; a small bowl of pudding has a quarter of all the salt you need for one day, a typical frozen dinner has roughly half, a small bag of chips will give you enough for a couple days.  The recommended daily allowance for salt is around 2000 mg. per day....that's the upper limit, it is actually recommended to take in less.  Most Americans easily take in three to four times that amount daily....and that's before even reaching for the salt shaker.

So what to do?

First thing is get rid of that salt shaker.  With as much sodium in foods these days there just isn't any wiggle room to be adding extra at the dinner table.  Next is to eat as many fresh vegetables and fruits that you can while avoiding anything processed as much as possible.  Meat is naturally high in sodium, so that's another good reason to eat reasonable portions.  Milk and cheese is super high with sodium...so use sparingly.  This last is especially hard for me because I am extremely fond of all types of cheese.

The most effective thing though is to be a label reader.  Read and compare sodium levels and try to opt for the brands that offer the lowest.  At first it may suck in that you might feel your food is not seasoned properly.  I do promise you though, after you get use to a low sodium diet, you will not be able to choke down any thing that most people would call normally salted.  Your taste buds will adapt, especially if you concentrate on flavors in food rather than saltiness.  My best strategy is to look for other spices to zip up your food.  There are loads of them out there.  Experiment.  I like hot sauce and Sriracha is my number one go-to seasoning for just about everything.

Careful though.....Sriracha has sodium too.

ya can't win