Sodium Levels - What is classed as high

Sodium helps regulate blood volume and aids in nerve impulse conduction and muscle contraction control. Therefore isolated incidences of excessive sodium intake results in edema (fluid retention) which puts stress on the cardiovascular system. Typically the kidneys compensate by excreting the resulting excess fluid. However, persistent excessive consumption greatly increases the risk of hypertension. Doctors and dietitians usually recommend no more than 2400 mg of sodium per day for the general population. I think MFP puts the maximum at 2500 mg per day.

You should be particular vigilant about watching your sodium intake if there is a history of heart disease or renal disease in your family. I have worked with individuals on hemodialysis before. It is eye-opening for sure and makes one want to be particularly careful about sodium intake. It is not something to take so lightly.

Sodium occurs naturally in many foods. It also is used as a preservative so foods that are prepackaged or processed are VERY high in sodium. Then we tend to add a lot of table salt to our foods as well. You can adjust your diary so that you can keep track of sodium if you like. You might be surprised how much sodium you eat in a day. I know I was! I don't use table salt anymore. I cook many of my foods with onions, peppers, fresh garlic and herbs to add flavor. I also started using an awesome sodium free seasoning and I love it!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Watch out for the Gram/Milligram problem - MFP counts sodium in milligrams - many foods in the database have been wrongly entered in grams which means you get a very low total when it should be high - so if you are picking items from the database have a look at the Nutritional Info link and correct it where wrong.

e.g. The label may have said sodium 0.4g and someone has entered that in the database - it should be 400 - until you open the Nutritional Info panel MFP will show it as 0 (rounded down) or for a value of 0.55 will round up to 1 - be very suspicious of any sodium value < 10 - that would normally just be on the label as trace - if its a decimal value multiply it by 1000 to change g to mg.

If you only have a salt value convert that to mg and then take 4/10ths as the sodium value.

This is especially true for UK products as most labels here use grams for salt/sodium.

Try to keep your daily sodium count well below the 2500 MFP figure - that is the same as the US official limit but other countries use a lower number - 1500 in Canada I believe.