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Sodium / Salt errors

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alexandlee1
alexandlee1 Posts: 6 Member
in Feature Suggestions and Ideas
Foods will list Salt but not sodium.
Can you list somewhere that Sodium is 40% of a salt value?
Users/creators need to enter the correct values to be helpful to other users otherwise it is pointless.

1. Too many foods entered into the diary have 0mg for sodium because the creator doesn't know the relationship
2. Too many foods have wrong entries for sodium because the packet says 1g for salt so the creator will list sodium as 1 (mg) or 1000 (mg)

Very frustrating and time consuming too change the entry.
Please assist.
Cheers
Lee
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Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    The overwhelming majority of users are in the US and entries are created by users as per the food label. Salt isn't listed on US food labels, only sodium.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,129 Member
    edited November 2021
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    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    The overwhelming majority of users are in the US and entries are created by users as per the food label. Salt isn't listed on US food labels, only sodium.

    Well, I'm not so sure. I see quite a lot of UK users as well in the forums, for example. And these are the English speaking forums, so that's a bias in itself.
    Is there a source that will say where MFP's users are based?

    In Europe it's the opposite, only salt specified, not sodium.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    Lietchi wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    The overwhelming majority of users are in the US and entries are created by users as per the food label. Salt isn't listed on US food labels, only sodium.

    Well, I'm not so sure. I see quite a lot of UK users as well in the forums, for example. And these are the English speaking forums, so that's a bias in itself.
    Is there a source that will say where MFP's users are based?

    In Europe it's the opposite, only salt specified, not sodium.

    Yes, there are a lot of UK users as well, but it's a US based company and it's pretty obvious on the forums that the vast majority are in the US. Also the way most of the entries are in the database...total carbs vs net carbs for example as well as certain other nutrients that are only required or not required by the USFDA.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,129 Member
    edited November 2021
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    I'm not at all convinced we non-USA peeps are so 'overwhelmingly' outnumbered as users. But even if we are a small percentage, that's still a large number of people in absolute numbers.

    With the net carbs option only being available in some countries (where it is applicable) and forums available in several European and Asian languages, MFP obviously has a scope beyond the US.

    So yeah, I fully endorse the proposal to add salt in the nutritional info alongside sodium, preferably with an automatic calculation happening between the two. I can't count the number of incorrect entries I've seen with the salt amount entered as sodium.
  • alexandlee1
    alexandlee1 Posts: 6 Member
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    Hadn't realised that the US foods list Sodium and not Salt.
    Is there a way MFP can just autocalculate it behind the scenes. Like a kg to lb conversion?

    Don't worry I won't ask MFP to change it to Fibre :)
  • Cheesy567
    Cheesy567 Posts: 1,186 Member
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    Agree- many people don’t pay attention to sodium, really don’t pay attention beyond calories at all. If you start to manually calculate macros, you begin to recognize how many erroneous entries are in the database, and if you extend that to the micronutrients, sodium is one of the easiest to spot.

    Having the double entry might confuse some users who aren’t aware of the difference chemically, but it’s be an interesting experiment to see what happens.
  • alexandlee1
    alexandlee1 Posts: 6 Member
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    Cheers cheesy. Do the owners of MFP read these 'suggestions and ideas'?
    I also think it is easier / lazier to add a new food/drink - rather than amend one that you know is wrong - which shouldn't really be the case.
  • ThirtySixGees
    ThirtySixGees Posts: 1 Member
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    I have been using this app for ages now and thought the sodium was correct. Now got high blood pressure not surprisingly. Hardly any of the green ticked items have any salt/sodium filled in. I am now adding the correct amounts in the non green ticked items.
  • rwarren1969
    rwarren1969 Posts: 20 Member
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    I'm finding the opposite -- my sodium numbers are scary high. Yes I know that sodium lurks in a lot of packaged food. But in fresh honeydew melon? Homemade chocolate chip cookies? Unsweetened juice? Spring Mix salad without dressing?! Come on. This gives me serious doubts about the accuracy of what I'm trying to track.

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,129 Member
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    rwarren1969 wrote: »
    I'm finding the opposite -- my sodium numbers are scary high. Yes I know that sodium lurks in a lot of packaged food. But in fresh honeydew melon? Homemade chocolate chip cookies? Unsweetened juice? Spring Mix salad without dressing?! Come on. This gives me serious doubts about the accuracy of what I'm trying to track.

    The food database entries are crowdsourced, so I can confirm your doubts: check the entries you use, many of them contain errors.

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