Sodium and Salt

bhethcote

I never really paid too much attention to it before, but now that I am, the amount of sodium in stuff seems kind of alarming. It got me wondering how to convert that into a unit that actually means something, like teaspoons of salt.

I found a good article url="http://www.quirkyscience.com/convert-milligrams-of-sodium/"]click here[/url that describes how the calculation works, but here is the conversion:

Teaspoons Salt = Milligrams Sodium x 0.00043

So, if I take my daily sodium target of 2300 mg, that equals 0.989 teaspoons of salt. Wow, just under 1 teaspoon of salt. Not sure if that helps anyone, but it helps me visualize it better.

FredDoyle

bhethcote wrote: »

I never really paid too much attention to it before, but now that I am, the amount of sodium in stuff seems kind of alarming. It got me wondering how to convert that into a unit that actually means something, like teaspoons of salt.

I found a good article url="http://www.quirkyscience.com/convert-milligrams-of-sodium/"]click here[/url that describes how the calculation works, but here is the conversion:

Teaspoons Salt = Milligrams Sodium x 0.00043

So, if I take my daily sodium target of 2300 mg, that equals 0.989 teaspoons of salt. Wow, just under 1 teaspoon of salt. Not sure if that helps anyone, but it helps me visualize it better.

The thing is, most sodium consumption comes in solution, not from the shaker so it's hidden.
The only way to really cut back is by making your own food. That said, up your potassium to get a better ratio.

bhethcote

Thanks @FredDoyle - good point. It was just hard to visualize what 2300 mg of sodium was and the idea that just a teaspoon of salt would contain a whole day's worth of sodium is kind of eye-opening.

ducati45

Unless your doctor has specifically told you to reduce your sodium intake in an effect to reduce high blood pressure, don't worry about it. It has minimal bad effect and sodium is very important to the body, especially for people who are on a low carb diet or exercising and drinking more water than they are used to- it doesn't cause high blood pressure it's just one of the factors used to treat it.

shai74

ducati45 wrote: »

Unless your doctor has specifically told you to reduce your sodium intake in an effect to reduce high blood pressure, don't worry about it. It has minimal bad effect and sodium is very important to the body, especially for people who are on a low carb diet or exercising and drinking more water than they are used to- it doesn't cause high blood pressure it's just one of the factors used to treat it.

^^ this

modern research has shown salt isn't that bad for you, quite the opposite, some salt is fine. I eat low carb, and drink a fair bit of water, and if I don't have enough salt I get headaches. Yes, I've had it confirmed by my Dr. to up my salt to combat it.

Pet_Ski

In the database quite a number of nutrition facts are false on Sodium.

The reason is in the labels. I don’t know about other European countries, but in Finland the facts consists salt. I have noticed, that really many Finnish products has been put into the database without converting salt into natrium (sodium) and therefore the numbers are 0.6 times too big. However this does not change the fact, that really lot of gravies and serve ready sauces are really thick in salt.

If your logged sodium values are ridigulously high, check the nutrition facts and, please report them to the admin. You can change the value on your meal, and save the food
into My Foods, but it will not correct the error in the database.

I don’t know, if there is a general information on adding new foods or some advice on this. There should be both, salt and sodium in the list to keep the unaknowledged from making fools errors on this. Double the damage, if they start then cutting healthy amount of salt off their diet due this.

lemurcat2

FredDoyle wrote: »

bhethcote wrote: »

I never really paid too much attention to it before, but now that I am, the amount of sodium in stuff seems kind of alarming. It got me wondering how to convert that into a unit that actually means something, like teaspoons of salt.

I found a good article url="http://www.quirkyscience.com/convert-milligrams-of-sodium/"]click here[/url that describes how the calculation works, but here is the conversion:

Teaspoons Salt = Milligrams Sodium x 0.00043

So, if I take my daily sodium target of 2300 mg, that equals 0.989 teaspoons of salt. Wow, just under 1 teaspoon of salt. Not sure if that helps anyone, but it helps me visualize it better.

The thing is, most sodium consumption comes in solution, not from the shaker so it's hidden.
The only way to really cut back is by making your own food. That said, up your potassium to get a better ratio.

Depends on the person. I'm reasonably sure that most of my salt consumption comes from adding a little when cooking. I don't add a lot, but as noted you don't need to for it to add up.

I don't log it, however, since I mostly cook from scratch and don't have any blood pressure issues.

OldHobo

I add salt while cooking by pinching some out of a can of kosher salt. So how much is a pinch?

A few years ago I decided to find out. I have three different pinching styles.

1. One-Finger Pinch - Thumb to index finger.
2. Two-Finger Pinch - Thumb to index and middle fingers.
3. Three-Finger Pinch - Thumb to index, middle, and ring fingers.

Using a scale accurate to 0.01 gram I weighed each of the styles pinching Morton Kosher Salt and repeating each pinch 15 times.
One-finger pinches were all very tightly grouped around an average of 0.38 grams.
Two-finger pinches were almost as tightly grouped around an average of 0.90 grams.
Three-finger pinches varied widely. I don't remember the numbers. They don't matter because I knew immediately they were too inconsistent to log.

So I wrote 0.38 and 0.90 on my salt can and that's what I log.

OldHobo

Pet_Ski wrote: »

In the database quite a number of nutrition facts are false on Sodium.

The reason is in the labels. I don’t know about other European countries, but in Finland the facts consists salt. I have noticed, that really many Finnish products has been put into the database without converting salt into natrium (sodium) and therefore the numbers are 0.6 times too big. However this does not change the fact, that really lot of gravies and serve ready sauces are really thick in salt.

If your logged sodium values are ridigulously high, check the nutrition facts and, please report them to the admin. You can change the value on your meal, and save the food
into My Foods, but it will not correct the error in the database.

I don’t know, if there is a general information on adding new foods or some advice on this. There should be both, salt and sodium in the list to keep the unaknowledged from making fools errors on this. Double the damage, if they start then cutting healthy amount of salt off their diet due this.

Salt, sodium chloride, is 40% sodium. I log salt, not sodium.

lemurcat2

OldHobo wrote: »

Pet_Ski wrote: »

In the database quite a number of nutrition facts are false on Sodium.

The reason is in the labels. I don’t know about other European countries, but in Finland the facts consists salt. I have noticed, that really many Finnish products has been put into the database without converting salt into natrium (sodium) and therefore the numbers are 0.6 times too big. However this does not change the fact, that really lot of gravies and serve ready sauces are really thick in salt.

If your logged sodium values are ridigulously high, check the nutrition facts and, please report them to the admin. You can change the value on your meal, and save the food
into My Foods, but it will not correct the error in the database.

I don’t know, if there is a general information on adding new foods or some advice on this. There should be both, salt and sodium in the list to keep the unaknowledged from making fools errors on this. Double the damage, if they start then cutting healthy amount of salt off their diet due this.

Salt, sodium chloride, is 40% sodium. I log salt, not sodium.

If you are using MFP, they track sodium, not salt.

OldHobo

lemurcat2 wrote: »

If you are using MFP, they track sodium, not salt.

Huh? I don't about you, but I log food, not micronutrients.
In fact, my food diary has been elsewhere for a couple years now because of the junked-up MFP database. You might be able to log sodium here but you can do all manner of stupid stuff when the database has no way to filter out user input garbage. But it is still possible to log salt as food because I just did it.

This is what the screen looks like when adding Morton Kosher Salt

This is what the food diary looks like after you log the salt. Of course it displays sodium just as it would display protein if chicken was entered.

And the reason you want to enter the food instead of the nutrient is to use valid and intelligently curated databases to keep track of how much of each nutrient is consumed. For example, below is a list of sodium sources from my food diary for today that came from foods other than salt.

lemurcat2

My understanding is that the poster you originally responded to was talking about accounting for sodium in existing foods, not logging sodium instead of salt when you add salt when cooking. Obviously you would log salt (if you bother logging it), but even so, what MFP tracks is the sodium in the salt, not the total amount of salt (when you look at nutrition facts).

The issue for some is that US labels list "sodium" (in mg), and the MFP entries, when you create them, ask about the amount of sodium. In Europe, labels list salt (in g), and so some people carelessly fill in the salt amount (converting to mg) when creating an entry (if they include that part of it at all), and so the amount listed for sodium is too high.

There's no option to include "salt" when creating an entry, and so routinely including salt instead of sodium would make them wrong -- which is what I thought you were talking about.