Oct
26
Over the weekend, I cleaned the fridge and realized I owned enough sodium-laden condiments to give the entire country heart disease. One particularly shocking culprit: jerk marinade, of which one tablespoon (one tablespoon!) contained nearly one-quarter of the daily recommended sodium intake. (The upper limit for sodium intake is 2,300 mg/per day, but most of us consume upwards of 3,500 mg daily). Pair a jerk-marinated chicken breast with a couple of flour tortillas, as I did recently, and you’ve had more than half your daily sodium intake by lunch time.
What’s even more embarrassing about this – aside from the state of my fridge – is that I consider myself to be fairly salt savvy: I wrote the Everything you need to know about sodium guide that appears in the December 2009 issue of Chatelaine. Clearly, I had some brushing up to do. So I asked one of our writers, Laura Trethewey, to track down some other surprising sources of sodium. She spoke with registered dietitian Jorie Janzen of Winnipeg, and together they compiled this salty list of shame:
1/ Fast food grilled chicken sandwiches (which seems like a healthy choice, until you realize one can contain up to 1,200 mg of sodium)
2/ Spaghetti with pasta sauce (sodium count can range from 800 to 1,000 mg per serving)
3/ Fast-food raisin bran muffins (my favourite coffee shop’s version contains 780 mg!)
4/ One cup of canned mixed beans (520 mg; washing beans thoroughly can help reduce this amount)
5/ Soy patties (the leading soy burger contains 440 mg of sodium per serving)
For more on why it’s so hard to shake our salt habit, check out the December issue of Chatelaine, on stands now.
