How do you cut back on sodium?

I make my own food. That's the main aspect of it.

If eating out someplace that has nutritional info online, check the sodium amounts and get the lowest plus plan for it by drinking plenty of water.
If they don't have info, try to be smart about choices. Avoid broths, Asian sauces, and other things typically high in sodium.

Eat potassium rich foods and drink plenty of water everyday to equalize the sodium you're getting.

But it always comes back to avoiding pre-made/pre-packaged foods as much as possible and just making your own.

The biggest culprits I've found for sodium in day to day living are pre-boxed and pre-canned foods - tv dinners, soups, meal-in-box stuff, pasta sauce, frozen pizzas, etc. To a more limited extent beef is higher in sodium than say fresh chicken but the real culprits for most people are pre-made foods. Sauces in packets, like grill rubs, taco mix, marinades, etc, are super high in sodium too as is pre-made chicken/beef broth and boillion cubes (or however you spell that - drawing a blank).


If you mostly switch to eating whole foods - whole fruits, whole veggies, lean meats, etc - it cuts down a lot. It's not going to be perfect and if you eat at a restaurant it's just close to impossible to control. But going over occasionally isn't a big deal although I'd avoid the scale afterwards.


Edit: Oh yeah, pre-cooked meats too - salt is huge in lunchmeats, sausages, etc. Frozen meats too, because they tend to freeze chicken breasts in broth. Fresh chicken breasts and even those pre-roasted chickens are a lot lower in sodium.

A second edit: One other big source of sodium I've found is cottage cheese, but as much as I am not a salt person I will totally admit that low sodium cottage cheese is not yummy


And yet another edit because this has been somthing I've watched for the past few months: If you do treat foods like potato chips, etc, the baked stuff is higher in sodium to make up for less taste because they took the yummy fat out. So lower sodium chips are going to be the not-reduced fat non-baked versions. A better alternative is air-popped popcorn - you can control exactly what kind of toppings you put on so can control the sodium much better.

Just a quick look at your diary and I can tell you where to look the last few days:
1. Turkey dogs
2. Subway sandwiches
3. Chili's

It's something to think about, because unless you have medical indications your body tends to flush it out pretty easily but it will increase temporary water retention so if you go high on your sodium count for the day you can see your scale number flux upwards. But if you don't have a medical need to watch it a lot of people don't.

I have no heart issues personally but I don't like overloading on it anyway. Once in a while isn't a big deal for me though.

i have to go ahead and ditto a lot of the responses. i had the same issue, it wasnt until i lowered my processed food intake that it finally became manageable. try making most of your own food because takeout and frozen meals are dripping in sodium its disgusting lol. also things that are usually sodium high, some cheeses, most breads/tortillas, and NEVER add salt to anything, use spices for flavor not salt.

I second everyone else with the prepackaged/processed foods.

Sodium used to be my problem but I cut out a lot of the processed takeaway type foods and its now under control .....sugar is not however and I would swap my sugar for your sodium any day.

Anything processed or packaged is likely to be high in sodium. Restaurant items are almost ALWAYS high in sodium.

This is my biggest problem area. Its hard to eliminate all processed food and cook all meals myself.

Soups and lunch meat get me every time. Canned tuna too.