Too much salt?
Misssynth
Posts: 179 Member
I usually cook/prep all my food from scratch, but I had a bit of a ham mishap in our prepped lunches this week. It must have had a short 'best before' date on it that I didn't notice so we had to throw out our last two days lunches. I grabbed a couple of cans of soup to replace them and BOTH (Heinz brand) have come up when I logged them on here as being over MFPs entire daily goal for me. Just in a can of soup!! I know food like that has extra salt in it but jeeezzz. It seems though MFP have given me less of a salt allowance than the general government guidelines, so what effect might the extra salt have on my weightloss, if any?
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Its 2 days...youll be fine. not sure i get why people care anyway, Yes it can make you retain water but say you had retained water and kept eating salt while losing weight...Wouldnt you still be losing weight just like 5 pounds heavier? Youll be just fine lol
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Canned soup contains A LOT of sodium. It won't make you gain any weight if you didn't go over your daily allowed calorie intake. You will however see a higher number on the scale from water retention. But don't worry about that. Once you go back to less sodium your body will lose the water retention in a matter of days and you'll be back to where you were before.0
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JaydedMiss wrote: »Its 2 days...youll be fine. not sure i get why people care anyway, Yes it can make you retain water but say you had retained water and kept eating salt while losing weight...Wouldnt you still be losing weight just like 5 pounds heavier? Youll be just fine lol
I don't mean those two days only, I'm wondering in general! Because MFP gives me a lower limit than national guidelines I'm wondering WHY it does.0 -
you can always change it to match the guidelines or what ever you want to follow for it0
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I see that you are from England.
MFP lists the recommended sodium while your nutrition info on the soup likely lists the salt content. Salt is sodium chloride and that sodium is about 40% of the weight of the salt.
The current sodium guidelines in the US are 2300 mg which is the equivalent of 5750 mg (or 5.75 g) of salt.1 -
I use an online Salt to Sodium converter to get the right amount of sodium on MFP. As long as I'm under 2300 sodium I'm fine.0 -
On my last carb refeed, I used bagels and ignored sodium intake like an idiot. Now granted, I was at the extreme end of things with roughly 13,000mg in a 24 hour period. But let's put it this way: that was almost two weeks ago, and I just today finished shedding most of the 16 lbs. of water retention I put on.1
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I usually cook/prep all my food from scratch, but I had a bit of a ham mishap in our prepped lunches this week. It must have had a short 'best before' date on it that I didn't notice so we had to throw out our last two days lunches. I grabbed a couple of cans of soup to replace them and BOTH (Heinz brand) have come up when I logged them on here as being over MFPs entire daily goal for me. Just in a can of soup!! I know food like that has extra salt in it but jeeezzz. It seems though MFP have given me less of a salt allowance than the general government guidelines, so what effect might the extra salt have on my weightloss, if any?
Unless you have high blood pressure, and even then some high blood pressure has nothing to do with sodium, all a spike in sodium will result in is some water retention.0 -
rileysowner wrote: »I usually cook/prep all my food from scratch, but I had a bit of a ham mishap in our prepped lunches this week. It must have had a short 'best before' date on it that I didn't notice so we had to throw out our last two days lunches. I grabbed a couple of cans of soup to replace them and BOTH (Heinz brand) have come up when I logged them on here as being over MFPs entire daily goal for me. Just in a can of soup!! I know food like that has extra salt in it but jeeezzz. It seems though MFP have given me less of a salt allowance than the general government guidelines, so what effect might the extra salt have on my weightloss, if any?
Unless you have high blood pressure, and even then some high blood pressure has nothing to do with sodium, all a spike in sodium will result in is some water retention.
Precisely what has been said here. Ignore any scale fluctuations as it'll just be water this week.2 -
The American Heart Association recommends no more than 1500 mg per day. Sodium consumption is a major factor in high blood pressure. Consider this about sodium from: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nutrition/About-Sodium-Salt_UCM_463416_Article.jsp#
"It’s an essential nutrient, but if you’re like most Americans you’re probably getting way more sodium than your body needs or that's good for your heart.
"In some people, sodium increases blood pressure because it holds excess fluid in the body, creating an added burden to your heart. Blood pressure rises with age, and eating less sodium now will help curb that rise and reduce your risk of developing other conditions associated with too much sodium, such as stroke, heart failure, osteoporosis, stomach cancer, and kidney disease.
"Most Americans consume about 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day — more than twice the 1,500 milligrams recommended by the American Heart Association.
"The biggest contributor to our sodium consumption is not the salt shaker. Approximately 75 percent of the sodium we eat comes from sodium added to processed foods and restaurant foods."0 -
Your weight may go up a couple of pounds for a couple of days due to water retention. It will go back down.1
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Interesting reading.. not trying to sway anyone to eat more sodium, but since I generally average 4000+mg a day or so without too much issue it makes me wonder:
http://www.livescience.com/47348-sodium-guidelines-rethought.html
Bottom line is that it affects everyone differently. Eating over the sodium guidelines for extended periods of time is believed to be one cause of high blood pressure, but it doesn't always affect people the same way. People who drink a lot of water for instance, can handle a higher intake. I actually notice getting dehydrated faster when I stay below 2300mg a day even though I drink the same amount of water each day (or try to). I had a grandmother who salted everything, preserved meats in salt, you name it she put salt in/on it if she could get away with it. She lived to be 92 and never had high blood pressure. Yet when I was overweight I had high blood pressure, and it went away when I lost the weight. Salt/sodium intake has stayed the same, if not increased since I lost the weight. So in some ways the recommendations make no sense for some people. I wonder that if I keep up the 4000-6000mg intake of sodium on a regular basis will my high blood pressure come back later in life? Maybe. Maybe not.
One thing is for certain, making your own soup would be better than eating canned soup, sodium is used to give it a longer shelf life and to enhance flavor in canned/pre-packaged foods. So if you can cook it raw, go sparingly with the salt, and season with other spices, you'll be better off. Any day I go over my intake it's because of something I ate that was pre-packaged like lunchmeat, tuna, even condiments. When I have time to make my own foods it doesn't happen. Unfortunately I don't always have time to make my own substitutes.2 -
Lots of debate about what the sodium requirements should be: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/more-scientists-doubt-salt-is-as-bad-for-you-as-the-government-says/?utm_term=.2b36f9fd24b2
Personally, since I don't eat a lot of packaged/ultra-processed stuff or fast food, and since I've never had an issue with my blood pressure at all, I don't worry about it and use salt in cooking and don't track it.1 -
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Lots of debate about what the sodium requirements should be: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/more-scientists-doubt-salt-is-as-bad-for-you-as-the-government-says/?utm_term=.2b36f9fd24b2
Personally, since I don't eat a lot of packaged/ultra-processed stuff or fast food, and since I've never had an issue with my blood pressure at all, I don't worry about it and use salt in cooking and don't track it.
And on the flip side I eat very little salt too, I'd say about 2g-3g a day and still have high blood pressure. My blood pressure is nothing to do with diet it's more anxiety. I don't intentionally have little salt, I just don't eat many processed foods or add salt to food either.0 -
And on the flip side I eat very little salt too, I'd say about 2g-3g a day and still have high blood pressure.
2g-3g per day is 2000mg to 3000mg so that is not a particularly low amount for sodium BUT there's only 388mg of sodium in a gram of salt so 2g-3g of salt is only 775mg-1164mg of sodium. Note, however, that other foods contain sodium as well.0 -
HeidiCooksSupper wrote: »And on the flip side I eat very little salt too, I'd say about 2g-3g a day and still have high blood pressure.
2g-3g per day is 2000mg to 3000mg so that is not a particularly low amount for sodium BUT there's only 388mg of sodium in a gram of salt so 2g-3g of salt is only 775mg-1164mg of sodium. Note, however, that other foods contain sodium as well.
That's 2g-3g of salt not sodium.0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?
My target is 2300mg. The soup was 2800mg. But on the can it says it would only be 23% of the recommended daily intake of salt, which is why I'm so confused!0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?
My target is 2300mg. The soup was 2800mg. But on the can it says it would only be 23% of the recommended daily intake of salt, which is why I'm so confused!
I think someone gave a good explanation upthread:
The 2300 mg recommendation is sodium, not salt, which is what the US recommendations are based on. UK labels seem to be counting salt, not sodium, and the UK recommendation for adults seems to be 6 g of salt (which converts to about 2300 mg of sodium -- so is about the same, except that sodium is in things besides salt, of course).
If the 2800 mg is salt (as seems likely), then it's only 1103 mg sodium. Now, that would be about 46% of the total recommended amount of salt (which again I think is 6 g), so probably it's that the recommended amount applies to a serving size of half the can (or 1400 mg of salt, about 551 mg of sodium). If so, that explains the 23%.3 -
Canned soup is always higher in salt/ sodium than fresh, look at their best before end dates - gotta query how they keep that 'food' in there... I find eating too much sodium makes my feet and legs cramp more and I retain water. MFP gives a guideline of 2300 and the NHS guideline is 2300.1
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cwolfman13 wrote: »
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?
My target is 2300mg. The soup was 2800mg. But on the can it says it would only be 23% of the recommended daily intake of salt, which is why I'm so confused!
I wouldn't even stress it. But if you want, you can eat foods high in potassium and magnesium to help offset some water weight.1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?
My target is 2300mg. The soup was 2800mg. But on the can it says it would only be 23% of the recommended daily intake of salt, which is why I'm so confused!
I think someone gave a good explanation upthread:
The 2300 mg recommendation is sodium, not salt, which is what the US recommendations are based on. UK labels seem to be counting salt, not sodium, and the UK recommendation for adults seems to be 6 g of salt (which converts to about 2300 mg of sodium -- so is about the same, except that sodium is in things besides salt, of course).
If the 2800 mg is salt (as seems likely), then it's only 1103 mg sodium. Now, that would be about 46% of the total recommended amount of salt (which again I think is 6 g), so probably it's that the recommended amount applies to a serving size of half the can (or 1400 mg of salt, about 551 mg of sodium). If so, that explains the 23%.
Oh thank you! I thought Sodium was only in salt. Well, until this whole thread I thought it was just another name for salt (Chemistry never was a strong subject for me). I read this and then changed what nutrition I can see on my MFP food diary and found sodium in things like tomatoes which I didn't expect, so that does explain why the soup was over my limit. I'm keeping sodium on my diary now to keep a better check on it for a while.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »
It shouldn't...it should give you the RDA top end of 2,300 mg. What does your target say? How much was in the soup?
My target is 2300mg. The soup was 2800mg. But on the can it says it would only be 23% of the recommended daily intake of salt, which is why I'm so confused!
I think someone gave a good explanation upthread:
The 2300 mg recommendation is sodium, not salt, which is what the US recommendations are based on. UK labels seem to be counting salt, not sodium, and the UK recommendation for adults seems to be 6 g of salt (which converts to about 2300 mg of sodium -- so is about the same, except that sodium is in things besides salt, of course).
If the 2800 mg is salt (as seems likely), then it's only 1103 mg sodium. Now, that would be about 46% of the total recommended amount of salt (which again I think is 6 g), so probably it's that the recommended amount applies to a serving size of half the can (or 1400 mg of salt, about 551 mg of sodium). If so, that explains the 23%.
Oh thank you! I thought Sodium was only in salt. Well, until this whole thread I thought it was just another name for salt (Chemistry never was a strong subject for me). I read this and then changed what nutrition I can see on my MFP food diary and found sodium in things like tomatoes which I didn't expect, so that does explain why the soup was over my limit. I'm keeping sodium on my diary now to keep a better check on it for a while.
Sodium is 40% of salt (by weight). Salt is sodium chloride, so one sodium ion + one chloride ion. And sodium can encompass things that aren't table salt, like MSG. Everything has some sodium in it, sodium is one of the fundamental ions of all living things.2
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