Tuesday, November 16, 2010

So What's a Person to Do?

Saw the doctor yesterday: Everything's fine except my blood pressure, despite the pill I take. Doctor says, "Eat less salt." Sigh.

Here's what I learned about salt this morning:

It's in everything.

There's way too much in everything, even if the label suggests the food is "healthy" "natural" "low sugar" "low fat" or whatever.

So what's a person to do?!!

I'm having tomato soup and a tuna sandwich for lunch. Here's the salt content:
  • 4 oz. tuna = 360 mg. salt
  • 2 tablespoons mayo = 230 mg. salt
  • 1 tablespoon relish = 90 mg. salt
  • 2 slices pumpernickle bread = 380 mg. salt
Total salt in my humble sandwich?  1060 mg.

One cup tomato soup = 960 mg

My humble lunch includes a total of 2020 mg salt, which is the recommended daily allowance.

I haven't a clue about mg., but I looked it up and learned that one teaspoon of table salt contains iodine and anti-caking substances, and about two thousand mg. of actual salt.

I should make homemade tomato soup, and cook a piece of fresh tuna, and make sure my total seasoning of the lot is less than half a teaspoon of salt.

An even better option would be a piece of fish and a tomato but, oh, I do love my bread!

The salt thing is just one reason why eating food that is as close to nature as possible, as less processed as possible is worth all the trouble.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to make tomato soup, mayonnaise, bread and tuna salad from scratch, and I'll bring you pictures and a salt breakdown of it all. If I could send you all a soup and tuna salad lunch I would.

Hope you're having a wonderful day!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's an ambitious project! I think the soup will be easy to make. Looking forward to the recipes. Roy has BP issues also and we buy the low sodium canned soups in the winter. He likes them just fine! I also make a lot of soup but have no idea what the MGs are. I don't add salt but am sure some of the stuff I put in has it. Can't wait for your kitchen test results!
Jude *