If you can't seem to lower your blood pressure, the amount of salt that you ingest may be the culprit. Salt is lurking in many foods that you would never expect. Even if you don't have high blood pressure, it is important to pay attention to your salt consumption. The Food and Drug Administration recommends getting a maximum of 2,400 mg of salt to maintain optimum health. This is equal to only one teaspoon a day. Watch out for these 4 sneaky foods with surprisingly large amounts of salt:
1. Soups
Some soups can be as bad as French fries in terms of salt content. Canned soup is especially offensive. One cup of canned soup contains (on average) 1000 mg of sodium. The large sodium levels come from flavoring the broth with bullion or other seasoning salts. Chicken noodle soup is really only a good choice if you are sick and depleting your sodium levels through profuse sweating.
2. Cheeses
Parmesan Cheese contains 500 mg of sodium per ounce (and few people consume only one serving). Put a few teaspoons of Parmesan on your pasta, and you are already over the upper limit of your recommended daily sodium intake. This doesn't take into account the sodium in the pasta sauce. Try gruyere cheese to top your pasta. This flavorful cheese only contains 85 mg per serving and a little goes a long way.
3. Packaged Snack Foods
It is a general rule that if it comes in a package, it is loaded with sodium. This is especially true of "low-fat" or "fat-free" snack foods. These foods skimp on fat, but they make up for it with an obscene amount of salt. Sodium benzoate is a common salt that can be found in packaged foods. It's added to these foods to give them a longer shelf life.
4. Frozen Foods
In order to preserve and flavor frozen foods, a large amount of salt is added. Frozen foods are often less ripe when they go through the freezing process, so in order to enhance the flavor, salt is added. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a salt from an amino acid is a common type of salt to look out for in frozen foods. This is especially true for frozen foods that come packaged in a syrup or juice.
The best way to eliminate food that contains large amounts of salt is to prepare it yourself. This way, you can control the amount of salt that goes into your foods by starting with fresh ingredients. If you do buy packaged foods, look for brands that don't use preservatives. Once you start eliminating unnecessary salt from your diet, food will actually start to taste better and you will find that you don't need as much salt in order to bring out the food's natural flavor.
