Sodium vs Salt

Angaziwa

Have been feeling unsettled by the amount of "salt" in my diet. Have now realised that I have been recording my intake of salt without converting it to sodium. You live and you learn.

Curious as to whether there is an option to change the sodium intake goal to a salt intake goal?

lorrpb

Why are you more concerned about salt than sodium? Lots of foods have sodium even though you didn’t add salt.

lynn_glenmont

If you're using accurate database entries, you don't need to "convert" salt to sodium. MFP does it for you. That is, the entries show how much sodium is in the salt and other foods.

Angaziwa

All of the food labels I have been looking at have the "salt" content, rather than the "sodium" content. I did not realise there was a difference between the two.

I found that some of the database entries I wanted to use were not accurate, so decided to create some for myself to use, without understanding that sodium content is different to salt content.

I have been reading the amount of salt from the food packaging and adding that into the sodium field. Then when my daily food diary showed 4,300mg, I was under the impression that I had gone way over my goal, when in fact 4,300mg of salt is equal to 1,720mg of sodium.

"Do not confuse salt and sodium figures.

To convert sodium to salt, you need to multiply the sodium amount by 2.5. For example, 1g of sodium per 100g is 2.5 grams of salt per 100g.

Adults should eat no more than 2.4g of sodium per day, as this is equal to 6g of salt."

I have been confusing salt and sodium figures.

Lietchi

Yup, it depends on the country where you live. Where I live, salt values are given on the food labels and not sodium. Many entries in the database show incorrect sodium values for that reason.

I have low blood pressure, so I don't track sodium intake and I don't bother converting the values when they're wrong.
I don't think it's possible to track salt intake, that would require a separate field in the database.
I would love the option to choose between salt and sodium when entering new foods or correcting existing entries (with MFP converting automatically) but I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon.