Reducing Salt in Your Diet
Did you hear that Mayor Bloomberg has, “declared a war on salt” in NYC? It’s not as horrible as it sounds…..really! He and those backing this initiative are looking out for your best interest. A diet high in salt have been shown to:
- Increase your blood pressure leading to hypertension & a risk for heart disease
- Cause something called gastritis
- Aggravate asthma symptoms by impairing lung function
- Increase the body’s excretion of calcium in turn causing the formation of kidney stones
NYC is now a smoke-free, trans-fat free city. Next up is salt! The plan is to require merchants to slowly reduce the amount of salt in food items. The most major concern consumers seem to face right now is taste.
Yes, the proper amount of salt is needed in our diet. However, when used in excess, we are covering up the true taste of our food….in my opinion, masking real or even artificial products is no way to enjoy food. Bland food is no way to live either so getting back to a balanced state where our taste buds do the work is key. Let those taste buds of yours reveal themselves to you! Don’t use salt as your crutch.
Personally, I would like to see this reduction of table salt in products. Table salt has been processed so heavily that only the taste resembles true salt from our earth.
Yes, consumers should have a choice about what they put in their mouths but many do not even realize what poor quality ingredients are actually contained within packaged goods. Some of us read labels but many of us do not. Even if we do read labels, do we know the plethora of names that salt has?
At home you can help your body by purchasing good, high quality sea salt and making this a staple. This gives us the same amount of salt as table salt yet we’ll be consuming salt in it’s more natural state sans chemicals and processing. While using sea salt, find a healthy balance of it in your diet because too much or too little sea salt is not proper nutrition.
The only downfall to sea salt is the lack of iodine. Get your iodine (which is important for thyroid support) through seaweed or supplementation recommended by a trusted healthcare professional.
In Health,
Alison Held, M.S.
Nutritionist
www.healthfuldirection.com
