Wondering about sodium?

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karengetty1
karengetty1 Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi. I am on my 6th day of tracking on MFP. Can anyone tell me how much sodium I should eat per day? I just noticed that number that comes up after tracking seems high to me. Thanks!

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  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,215 Member
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    MFP suggests a daily recommended value.

    I usually come in about half that ... and unfortunately what happens then is that I crave salty snack foods. So, if I salt my food a bit during the day to get my sodium levels up, I don't crave salty snack foods. :)
  • melanieliving
    melanieliving Posts: 69 Member
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    Well here's the thing most health care professionals will recommend a daily consumption of less then roughly 2000mg of sodium daily, that being said if you are a healthy active adult who eats real food sodium is not a very big concern (compared to those with existing heart conditions). The dangers of sodium come if you eat alot of packaged foods, they are loaded with way more sodium then you would ever use in preparing a similar item from scratch. We don't buy packaged meals/convenience foods and it's actually very hard to go over in sodium (unless i'm eating a lot of homemade pickles.

    If your sodium is very high, increase your water consumption and reduce your packaged foods :)
  • _benjammin
    _benjammin Posts: 1,224 Member
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    I wouldn't worry about sodium, or even track it. You can customize what you "see"/track in your diary. The sodium and and heart disease connection is/was overblown: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/20/what-if-its-all-been-a-big-fat-lie-part-1.aspx
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
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    Based on a 2000 calories diet it is 2300. I try to stay at around 2000. It is hard to do and I now get sodium free products and I also no longer cook or prepare meals using table salt.
  • ewhip17
    ewhip17 Posts: 515 Member
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    I set mine manually at 2000 and try to stay under that if possible simply because too much sodium makes me feel like crap the next day. Took a while for me to correlate the two things but now it's very obvious. So I do track it because I'm often surprised at the amount of sodium in food, but again, I only track it because it makes me feel bloated and lousy and I'd rather avoid that if possible.
  • sullus
    sullus Posts: 2,839 Member
    edited March 2015
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    There's a lot of evidence that the recommended allowance of sodium is too low, and a lot of good research showing up that says anything between 2500 and 5000mg a day is fine, but less or more are both problems.

    http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/20140402/cdc-salt-guidelines-too-low-for-good-health-study-suggests

    Even if you avoid salt, make sure to use some regular table salt (not sea salt, not kosher salt, not himalayan pink salt) from time to time because its one of the only sources of iodine for a lot of people.
  • karengetty1
    karengetty1 Posts: 7 Member
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    Thanks everyone! I was so surprised how much sodium I was eating! Lunch meat, cheese and frozen battered fish to be exact! Wow!
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
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    Do you have a medical condition?
  • karengetty1
    karengetty1 Posts: 7 Member
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    I do have high blood pressure but it is managed.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Yup lots of sodium in prepackaged foods. It's a great preservative.

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