I'm coming from a region of Italy where there is a significant production of salty products like matured cheese and processed meat... If I would need to choose between a salty pretzel and a sweet biscuit, I guess I will go for the first one. Anyway, I know a bit about nutrition and consequences of exciting with salt intake, since really long time I have barely used salt to enrich taste of my meals, my family can confirm that, and to be honest it doesn't bother me, I have got used to it. Well for cooking It's a must...I know, it is awful to eat a plate of pasta cooked without salt! But generally I use less than what is recommended for some recipes.
But is it salt really so dangerous? Actually not! What is dangerous is sodium and common salt is made by sodium and chlorine. Forget chemistry and move on. Sodium gives taste and the typical properties of common salt. 1 g of salt contain 0.4 g of sodium and our intake of salt should not be more than 5 g per day, according to WHO . Do you know how much salt in average Italian people are introducing by consuming typical Italian food? 12 g per day!! more than double of recommended intake. No wonder then if our doctor keeps telling us that our blood pressure is too high! Of course we are also eliminating sodium: in normal condition of temperature, physical activity, sweating.. we eliminate something like 0.1 - 0.6 g of sodium which is still too low to compensate what we take from food. But why there is so much around salt and why shall we reduce daily intake?
Let's discuss a bit of biochemistry here. As I mentioned earlier salt is made by sodium and chlorine. Sodium is essential for our health; together with potassium it regulates osmosis of our cells so in few words it maintain a good balance between intra and extra cellular liquids. When we introduce too much sodium, this balance is broken because sodium attracts intra cellular water to the extra cellular space. And here we see the consequences: edema, swallowing of our body, increasing blood volume, hypertension. The increasing of blood pressure is linked to higher risk of cardiovascular and kidney diseases; more sodium means also more urine and higher loss of calcium which can potentially lead to increased risk of osteoporosis. It was also shown a link between increased risk of stomach cancer and significant consumption of salt. Last but not least, aesthetic consequences: increase extra cellular water will lead to higher water retention.. The nightmare of all the women!
Now maybe you're thinking I'm safe because I'm not using salt for dressing my salad or my meals. Actually, salt added is probably not so problematic, hidden salt is the real issue. Let's see where we can find sodium around us. Sodium can be found naturally in water, fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, milk; then can be added for cooking and for enhancing flavor; lastly it can be found in ready to eat meals and industrial food products. So the biggest problem of our generation is that we do not have so much time for cooking, we are dining often outside home, traveling a lot and therefore we tend to buy ready to eat meals, sauces, baking products, or simply consuming what the chef is preparing for us and we forget to look at the nutrition label. Let's park aside the events when we are dining outside, here we have not so much influence, we can only limit the time when we go out for dinner, bring our lunch at work and select meals which are possibly with low salt content. We will concentrate on the industrial food products: think that 54% of the sodium we introduce in our body is due to consumption of industrial products. The worst and tricky category is bakery: bread, crackers, biscuits, grissini.. and so on. Now you are thinking, "are you telling me that 100g of bread contains more salt than 100g of salami? " It does not actually contain so much salt as for example soya sauce, ketchup, salami or stock cube, but we consume baked products on a regular basis, often daily so, in long term they can gives us problems and we do not want to have problems right? We are not yet lost, there is still a chance and we can train our taste as well as our brain to a new flavor.
We can decide to work in two directions or both of them: reducing sodium or increasing potassium.
How to reduce sodium? Here what I do.
When i cook and season my meals, I try to substitute salt with other products like spices, aromatic herbs, adding lemon, garlic, vinegar, onions, ginger root, pepper. Also, just recently I started producing my own vegetable stock cube and freeze it.
I never buy ready to eat a meals, but if you are used to that try to find the one with low salt content. If I could, I would produce everything by myself, at least I know what I put inside. Currently, I am baking bread every three days, I never buy canned vegetables, I make my own sauce and I'm trying always to find a way to produce my own stuff. Definitely you need to invest a bit of time to it.
When I choose salt, I go for the one with iodine added. Iodine is a good prevention against dysfunction of thyroid hormone. You might also find dietetic salt where sodium has been substituted with potassium. Never bought that one.
Finally, if you are snacking often, try also to prepare something yourself like small oat-fruity bars, cut vegetables, fresh fruit, nuts.
The other option is to boost potassium. You should consume at least 3.5 g a day and potassium is not only present in a banana! 100 g of Banana contains 350 mg potassium but surprisingly kiwi contains 400 mg and avocado 450 mg per 100 g. Currant and nuts are also a good source of potassium. There are plenty of vegetables containing potassium: potato contain 570 mg, spinach 530 mg, legumes particularly beans 1445 mg, lentils 980 mg and chickpeas 881 mg, all in 100 g.
But how easily we overcome the maximum daily intake of sodium?
Let's assume that we are in a rush and we want to have a quick lunch with some bread, mozzarella and raw ham. Here the values:
50 g of white bread = 239 mg sodium
100 g of mozzarella = 200 mg sodium
50 g of raw ham = 1200 mg sodium
Tot: 1639 mg sodium ( max daily intake 2000 mg sodium) And we still have to include dinner!
In this case, a better option would be whole grain bread, cooked turkey slices and ricotta (tot 877 mg of sodium)!
The bottom line here is that we do not need necessary to eat without any taste in order to keep healthy! It's just a matter of selection and awareness!
Many companies are now anyway reducing salt content in their products and there is a target set by WHO to reduce global population's salt intake of 30% by 2025.
Have fun by reducing salt intake!!
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