Fat and Salted.

I love salt. In my opinion, next to sugar, salt is one of the most delicious of all flavors. The question is: Does salt love me? Facts: We need salt to live. Too much Kills!

The American Heart Association recommends that we need about 1 teaspoon of salt per day for adults and about half that amount for kids. The average American eats twice that amount. We can survive on about 1/5 that amount.

Excess salt causes problems. I am neither a nutritionist nor a physician. I know what I feel and see in my body when I eat too much salt; i.e. bloated and lethargic. I feel better with less salt.

I am not prepared to give up salt. I willfully monitor its intake by being aware of how much I knowingly consume. I am not fanatic enough to fastidiously monitor my every intake. I, however, consciously choose what I eat and so can you. I have choices about what obviously contains salt and what I obviously choose to add salt to. I choose less salt. As my consumption of salt goes down, so does my desire for salt. Reduce it gradually and you won’t notice the difference.

The purpose of this article is to strongly advise you to willfully monitor your salt intake and reduce it by about 1/3.

You might be surprised to know that we are directly responsible for only 15 percent of the salt that we add to our food. The food most of us eat already has about 10 percent of our daily sodium allowance occurring in it naturally. Most of the salt we consume, 75 percent, is found in the prepared or processed foods we regularly eat.
The only way that you can successfully reduce the salt in your diet is by knowing this and by willfully switching what we eat to foods with less added salt, by switching from processed foods to fresh foods we know the content of.

Without a plan to monitor our salt intake, we will eat as usual and as usual for most of us is too much salt.

Food companies and restaurants put a lot of salt in foods because people like and expect salted food. Eat it and they will serve it. Refuse it and they will be forced to sell what we as consumers demand. Ask them if they salt their food. If they do and you have already consumed your limit for the day, choose something different. If it tastes too salty, it is too salty, send it back.

Check food labels. Avoid items that contain more than 180 milligrams of sodium.

The food industry is reluctant to change successful recipes and foods. They are in the business of selling foods that sell. It is your responsibility for your health, not theirs. If you depend on them to change or the government to legislate healthy change, you will die early, Fat and salted. Or Not. You CHOOSE!