A couple of years ago, Mr L was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and they installed a stent.  Once we got through that procedure, he felt a whole lot better, but one of the dietary changes they asked of him was a significant reduction in salt intake.  We thought, no big deal, we don’t add salt to anything.  Wrong.  We may not add salt to anything, but food producers and most restaurants add it.  They add a lot of it.  They add it for flavor enhancement and as a preservative. Unless you make everything from scratch, you’re easily getting double the recommended amount of sodium.  Every single day. And they put sodium into foods you would never expect to need it.  Read a few labels just for grins and see what I mean.  You will be amazed.

What’s more amazing?  The 2,000 mg of sodium per day my husband’s doctor put him on is technically more than the recommended daily amount. After you read a few labels, you will comprehend what a joke that is.

We checked at our favorite restaurant, and, even though it’s a family-owned burger place, they did have the information for key menu items.  Amazingly, with some care, we could eat there.

Mr. L has a very sensitive palate, and he will tell me when something has too much salt in it.  Some of the items we looked for and found in low sodium or much lower sodium levels were peanut butter, canned peas, canned spinach, canned green beans, canned tomato products, salsa, and spaghetti sauce.  A local grocery chain even makes Unsalted  Tortilla Chips. They are much blander than standard tortilla chips, they are tolerable. Even though frozen vegetables would have zero sodium, Mr. L prefers his vegetables canned (I know, ick), so we get No Salt Added canned vegetables.

Even though our sodium attentiveness was raised by Mr. L’s health issue, I wanted to reduce our sodium intake for health reasons of my own.  Have you taken any steps to reduce sodium or other items in your diet?  Do you ever get tired of the popular dietary fads?  Low fat has been one of the biggest hoaxes perpetrated on us — mostly because of the sugar and other unhealthy things added to iterations of so-called low fat foods.  What others come to mind?