How to Reduce Salt Intake for a Heart Healthy Diet

Your doctor can tell you when you need to cut down on salt. That usually occurs when you are diagnosed with high blood pressure or other heart related illnesses. If you need to watch your salt intake, the following steps will help you make better food choices.

Instructions

1




Consult your doctor before you change your diet. Not everyone needs to cut down on their salt and if you are healthy and feeling good, your salt intake may be just right for you. Only your doctor can know for sure by giving you an exam and maybe running a few tests. Remember that salt and sodium are not the same thing. Sodium is a mineral that our bodies need to function correctly and can combine with many different things besides chloride. So table salt is just one of the salts that sodium produces.

2




Learn how to understand food labels. They tell you how much sodium the food contains. With this information you can easily figure out how much salt the food has by multiplying the amount of sodium by 2.5. So if a can of soup has 770 mg of sodium, it contains 1925 mg of salt. Make sure you get at least 150 mg of sodium, but the American Heart Association says that we shouldn't go over 2300 mg per day. Most of us should aim for 500 mg per day; 1 tsp. of salt contains 2400 mg of sodium, and most people in the United States consume 1 to 3 tsp. of salt per day.

3




Remove the table salt from your table. Salt brings out the flavor in food and that's why we use it. It is an acquired taste but we can eliminate it and usually within a month or so won't notice its absence. Adding salt at the table to our food is the first place to start to cut down. If we eat a variety of food we will naturally get the amount of sodium that we need. Flavor your food by using a salt substitute. If you don't like the taste of these, you can use a combination of seasonings that do not contain salt. Mrs. Dash is one such brand and has many different seasoning combinations that work well with food. Another alternative is to use a low or no sodium salsa or hot sauce to spice up bland foods.

4




Avoid canned foods, as they contain a great deal of sodium. If you have a choice of buying frozen or canned, frozen is a much better choice. The important thing is to pay attention to what you are eating, take the table salt off the table, and read food labels carefully.