10. Salt
As promised, my BP this morning was 121/86. A little better but not as much as I was expecting! However, I have lost 2 pounds in 4 days so not too bad!
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying some of the fresh food boxes you can buy from different suppliers. We’ve actually tried four different suppliers so far and had around 30-plus meals through them. I was cooking one meal last night…low calorie….fresh food…it was lovely! Then I checked the salt content. It was 3.91g per serving! So how does that quantify itself compared to guidelines. First, a bit of science…
Water balance
Salt helps to control many things in our bodies. Simplistically, this can be explained by water kept in and water sent out. If you’ve heard of a water tablet (in medicine we call it a diuretic), it works by forcing our body to excrete sodium (through the kidneys) which causes water to follow it. That’s why people on certain water tablets can pee for their country! Water tablets have the benefit of removing some excess water from the body (in certain medical conditions like heart failure) or reducing blood pressure (through the excretion of salt).
How much salt?
Salt is a key component of life itself. We all need some of it. The UK and American guidelines suggest around 6 grams per day but the American Heart Association goes on to say that 3.75g is probably enough. I can understand why there is so much confusion over recommended salt levels when there is a huge range between 3.75 and 6 grams. The Americans call it sodium (because salt in this context is called sodium chloride). If you ever see sodium in the side of a packet or jar, it’s salt they are talking about. The conversion is simple. Sodium x 2.5 = salt.
Diets
The main diet looking at salt levels on health was called the DASH trial and demonstrated the profound effects of salt/sodium on our blood pressure. We won’t go into detail other than to say the more salt we eat, the greater our blood pressure can become. The less salt, the lower our blood pressure.
To give an example of hidden salt in foods, let’s take one meal: a full English breakfast!
Bacon (2 rashers) = up to 2.8g salt
Beans (1/2 tin) = 1.2g salt
Sausages (2) = 1.2g salt
I won’t carry on with black pudding, hash browns, bread, etc etc but with those three alone, we’re at 5.2g salt! I know we don’t all eat them every day, but I challenge you to look at a typical day and add the salt together. Please let me know! You can use lots of apps on the market to do this free of charge. I use MyFitnessPal.
Processed foods are unfortunately killing us. Part of the rise in people with high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes has been thought to be directly related to our diets over the last few decades. We haven’t even talked about fat yet!
What am I doing?
Eating foods with a salt content of less than 3.75g per day
Not adding salt to food whilst cooking
Not adding salt at the table
Edit: I looked through our box delivery recipes and came across a ‘Ratatouille Scrunch Pie’ which we had a few weeks ago. That has 5.76g salt per serving! It’s just a reminder of hidden salt. Most of that came from their branded chopped tomatoes and their own vegetable paste. Shocking!