Random things I think about....

[tinuvial]

How much sodium is too much sodium for any single food item?

We really don't get a lot of help on this one. Processed food is chock-full of sodium, even the 'low-sodium' stuff. You'd be surprised, actually. I know I was once I started tracking my daily sodium intake. But what tools do we have to keep track in the grocery store, before we actually start to try to fit something into our diet? I mean, you can read the labels all you want, but I've seen stuff labeled "low sodium" that still contained 9% of the RDA for just one food item.

First of all, I'm trying to eliminate most processed foods. That's a no-brainer. But what about stuff like meat, cheese, yogurt, pudding, etc? Well, here is my solution.

Daily calories, 2000. Daily sodium 2400. So this means in essence, as long as you have < 1 mg of sodium per calorie in an item, overall, you're good to go. There is some 'fudge factor' in this, in that you have an additional 400 mg of sodium to play with, plus whatever sodium you've saved with fresh fruits/vegetables that have 0 sodium for the calories that you ingest.

By using the 1 cal=1 mg sodium rule, you can easily navigate the grocery store aisles without bringing stuff home that is too high in sodium for the calories that you ingest.

Ciao for now.