Why You Need to Cut Salt Out of Your Diet

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Aside from sugar cravings, our love for salty foods is almost inevitable. It’s because most of our cheat meals are salty!

Our body actually needs a little bit of salt in order to survive. However, with lots of tempting meals nowadays, we eat more than the required amount of 1,500 mg (less than 1 teaspoon) per day. And even more bad news, we get them from unhealthy processed foods.

If you feel like you are addicted to it, you need to cut salt out of your diet with the best that you can, especially if you’re aged 50, or suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes.

Registered dietitian Sidney Fry conducted a few experiments to test what happens in the salt in our food, and what you can do about them. Read more about it on Cooking Light:

The Truth About Salt In Your Food

You can’t live without salt: It’s essential for human metabolism. And you don’t want to: It makes a lot of good food taste better and plays important roles in cooking. But you’re being told to cut back, especially if you’re one of the 155 million at-risk Americans who are advised to consume just 1,500mg per day to lower the risk of high blood pressure. (The rest of us are allowed 2,300mg, which is about a teaspoon). Read more…

Furthermore, here are valid reasons why you need to cut your intake, as discussed by Emily Capdevielle on Fitness Republic:

Reasons to Cut Salt Out of Your Diet

Sodium has been gaining more of a reputation these days, however it remains to be a silent killer for many individuals. While sodium is essential to our health, too much of it can cause some serious health risks. The average American consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day, more than double the 1,500 milligrams recommended by the American Heart Association. What is the problem with this statistic? Excessive sodium consumption causes more deaths than any other single dietary factor, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Frightening right? There are many ways cutting salt out of your diet will benefit your health! Read more… 

It’s a very simple cycle, if we don’t cut back on salt, we raise our blood pressure, and if our blood pressure increases, we increase our risk of stroke, heart attacks and failure, too.

And lastly, the National Kidney Foundation shares some effective tips to reduce your intake:

TOP 10 TIPS FOR REDUCING SALT IN YOUR DIET

When it comes to dietary sodium, less is certainly best, yet Americans today consume 50% more than the recommended daily quantities of sodium. Diets high in sodium increase blood pressure levels. High blood pressure damages the kidneys over time, and is a leading cause of kidney failure. To help Americans reduce salt intake to the ideal one teaspoon per day, the National Kidney Foundation offers 10 tips to reduce sodium in your diet. To help Americans reduce salt intake to the ideal one teaspoon per day, the National Kidney Foundation and Council of Renal Nutrition member Linda Ulrich offer 10 tips to reduce sodium in your diet. Read more…

To wrap it up, you need to cut salt out of your diet because it’s one of the main culprits of different lifestyle diseases. Aside from raising your risk of cardiovascular diseases, it also declines your brain health, increases your risk of kidney stones, damages your skin, and even cause stomach ulcers.

Avoid food products that are high in added salt, particularly processed foods, fast food pizza and sandwich, canned soup, poultry, cured meat and bread.

According to the American Heart Association, sea and table salt are almost the same, so it’s important to just reduce your consumption in general.

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