Entering sodium / salt into the food database
mormas
Posts: 188 Member
UK guidelines recommend not exceeding 6g of salt per day (or 2400mg of sodium). Most UK foods list the salt, but MFP asks for the sodium values and tracks Sodium.
For those interested in tracking their salt, or those who enter items on the food database (for which I thank you), I have included the salt to sodium conversion formula below;-
Salt to sodium
To convert grams of salt to milligrams of sodium, divide the salt figure in grams by 2.5 and then multiply by 1,000 to get milligrams. So
grams of salt ÷ 2.5 = grams of sodium X 1,000
Example
6 grams of salt
6g ÷ 2.5 = 2.4g salt ... then multiplied by 1,000 = 2400 mg of sodium
So 6 g of salt equates to 2400 milligrams of sodium
For those interested in tracking their salt, or those who enter items on the food database (for which I thank you), I have included the salt to sodium conversion formula below;-
Salt to sodium
To convert grams of salt to milligrams of sodium, divide the salt figure in grams by 2.5 and then multiply by 1,000 to get milligrams. So
grams of salt ÷ 2.5 = grams of sodium X 1,000
Example
6 grams of salt
6g ÷ 2.5 = 2.4g salt ... then multiplied by 1,000 = 2400 mg of sodium
So 6 g of salt equates to 2400 milligrams of sodium
7
Replies
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Loads of people are entering the salt quantity into the sodium field and I'm getting very frustrated when told that I've massively gone over the sodium limit for the day when, in fact, it's the data that's wrong.
MFP should really consider putting a big notice next to the sodium field: "NOTE: Sodium is NOT the same as salt. Please DO NOT enter a salt value here. Divide salt quantity by 2.5 to get sodium."
Or even better, allow the user to choose whether to enter salt or sodium values and convert automatically. Software is supposed to make our lives easier, not increase our blood pressure due to bad UI/UX design!
Rant over7 -
THANK YOU! I've been looking for a formula for so long. I couldn't understand how I went 7,000-10,000 over my sodium intake.. Turns out I've calculated horribly wrong0
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Finally! An answer I didn't even know to ask the question for.0
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thefluffyone wrote: »Loads of people are entering the salt quantity into the sodium field and I'm getting very frustrated when told that I've massively gone over the sodium limit for the day when, in fact, it's the data that's wrong.
MFP should really consider putting a big notice next to the sodium field: "NOTE: Sodium is NOT the same as salt. Please DO NOT enter a salt value here. Divide salt quantity by 2.5 to get sodium."
Or even better, allow the user to choose whether to enter salt or sodium values and convert automatically. Software is supposed to make our lives easier, not increase our blood pressure due to bad UI/UX design!
Rant over
I’m fumin it’s now 2018, I stopped using MFP for this reason. There’s way too many inaccuracies.
This one could have been easily solved if MFP Added a SALT section instead of sodium!!!
2 -
thefluffyone wrote: »Loads of people are entering the salt quantity into the sodium field and I'm getting very frustrated when told that I've massively gone over the sodium limit for the day when, in fact, it's the data that's wrong.
MFP should really consider putting a big notice next to the sodium field: "NOTE: Sodium is NOT the same as salt. Please DO NOT enter a salt value here. Divide salt quantity by 2.5 to get sodium."
Or even better, allow the user to choose whether to enter salt or sodium values and convert automatically. Software is supposed to make our lives easier, not increase our blood pressure due to bad UI/UX design!
Rant over
I’m fumin it’s now 2018, I stopped using MFP for this reason. There’s way too many inaccuracies.
This one could have been easily solved if MFP Added a SALT section instead of sodium!!!
Better to be a salt and a sodium section then the conversation from salt to sodium. This is because some countries have sodium on their nutrition label while others have salt. At least now I know why I am often over on sodium....0 -
Well Americans and Australians cant access the uk App Store. So why not just have a salt section. Just went through my house, not a single item had a sodium figure on it. If you really insist on it. Then why not let us pick which one we want to use like you can when entering water amounts2
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Well Americans and Australians cant access the uk App Store. So why not just have a salt section. Just went through my house, not a single item had a sodium figure on it. If you really insist on it. Then why not let us pick which one we want to use like you can when entering water amounts
All Australian products have sodium content (not salt) on their nutrition panels0 -
Well Americans and Australians cant access the uk App Store. So why not just have a salt section. Just went through my house, not a single item had a sodium figure on it. If you really insist on it. Then why not let us pick which one we want to use like you can when entering water amounts
Not a single item has salt on mine because we list sodium in Australia. This is a universal app which needs to cater for people from all corners of the world.1 -
2019 and it's still the same problem. I need to monitor my salt/sodium levels and most entries of UK foods I check are inaccurate - this really needs to change. 1g salt = 400mg sodium. Simple!3
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Oh my gosh, I had no idea! I've even corrected a few entries (that maybe were even correct) because where I live the nutrition tables for packaged foods only show the salt content. Now I regret having done that.2
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Just bumping this up again as this is still an issue. Can the developers please add a salt / sodium option for when users are inputting their data? If they put in the salt amount is should automatically convert to sodium or visa versa. As others have said, this had led to many inaccuracies of data on the database.3
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From my experience MFP is only accurate for calories and even then care is needed with the database entries. As an example one entry for iceberg lettuce has a greater amount of fibre than the serving size.
In short, exercise due diligence.0 -
When I enter foods into the database I use this site for salt/sodium values....
https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/healthy-eating/food-and-nutrition/salt/sodium-and-salt-converter2 -
Something even worse I have found is that even foods scanned via a barcode, ie unsmoked back bacon from Tesco and cathedral city cheddar cheese comes up as 0mg of sodium!!!!!
Now I realise even though I’m maintaining my calorie goals, my sodium intake is still probably way over 2300mg of sodium.
This sounds like MFP or food manufacturers can pick and choose which nutritional values to publish via the app!!
Has no one else found this to be a major issue??? It makes the daily goals completely useless and inaccurate!!
Sure it’s illegal to do this? And MFP or the food manufacturers need to sort it big time!!
Mario2 -
mazydizzle wrote: »Something even worse I have found is that even foods scanned via a barcode, ie unsmoked back bacon from Tesco and cathedral city cheddar cheese comes up as 0mg of sodium!!!!!
Now I realise even though I’m maintaining my calorie goals, my sodium intake is still probably way over 2300mg of sodium.
This sounds like MFP or food manufacturers can pick and choose which nutritional values to publish via the app!!
Has no one else found this to be a major issue??? It makes the daily goals completely useless and inaccurate!!
Sure it’s illegal to do this? And MFP or the food manufacturers need to sort it big time!!
Mario
This is not a conspiracy between the food manufacturers and MFP - the food database is crowd-sourced (entered by the users) so it depends on who made the entry as to how complete/accurate it will be.4 -
This is not a conspiracy between the food manufacturers and MFP - the food database is crowd-sourced (entered by the users) so it depends on who made the entry as to how complete/accurate it will be.
But I’m talking about foods that come up using barcode scanning... I’m not talking about foods that users enter in to the MFP database.
2 -
mazydizzle wrote: »
This is not a conspiracy between the food manufacturers and MFP - the food database is crowd-sourced (entered by the users) so it depends on who made the entry as to how complete/accurate it will be.
But I’m talking about foods that come up using barcode scanning... I’m not talking about foods that users enter in to the MFP database.
Users have entered those foods too! I know I do when the scanned bar code is inaccurate or missing.4 -
mazydizzle wrote: »
This is not a conspiracy between the food manufacturers and MFP - the food database is crowd-sourced (entered by the users) so it depends on who made the entry as to how complete/accurate it will be.
But I’m talking about foods that come up using barcode scanning... I’m not talking about foods that users enter in to the MFP database.5 -
Oh really ok... I thought barcode scanning bought up foods MFP populated in the database2
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Looks like the developers don’t care. Years on, there is still no salt entry and people are still entering salt into sodium making the database wildly inaccurate - at least for UK foods.2
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