Is there a lot of salt/sodium in Indian food?

jrwms714 wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone knows the answer to this. I eat Indian food every so often, and truly love it. I have a salad and Bengain Bharta with whole wheat roti, and some of my husband's Vegetable Jalfrezi. I eat very little of the rice. (Forgive me if I am spelling some of this wrong.) I ask (as I do at most restaurants) to have no salt or at least no extra salt added to the dishes. I always gain 2 -3 lbs. the next day. I kind of figured that was salt and water retention, but my online research and the nutrition info on MFP say there's very little sodium in Indian dishes. Interested to hear what others know or experience.

I think most restaurant food is pretty salty. The MFP database has a lot of entries that lack sodium information or have wrong information. Many recipes say "salt to taste" and don't include salt in their nutritional breakdown.

I don't think Indian food is particularly low-sodium- though that is a broad category with many sub-cuisines! I find restaurant Indian food to be saltier than how I would cook it.

I'm not sure that asking for no added salt will really help. Some cuisines finish a dish with salt (and that could be omitted easily), but in my experience, Indian food usually includes salt from the start of cooking. Since many of the items are pre-cooked in large batches, I don't think it could be removed for a single customer.

It's more the fact that it's from a restaurant as opposed to it being a specific cuisine. It may just be that however it's prepared it cannot be made less salty for a specific customer.

I have the same thing when I order Indian. Or Buffalo Wild Wings. Even if my calories are right in line, the scale will jump - just as it does when I have super salty meals at home (doesn't happen too often, but did last night when I made a chicken dish with copious amounts of capers in it....).

My biggest "tell" is if, during the night, I'm extra thirsty. If I need to down a couple big glasses of water during the night, and I'm not up to use the bathroom every hour, then I KNOW that water is all just being retained and half the time I won't even bother weighing myself that next morning because I know it's going to be way off.