Because I'm not beneath offering my body to science, I've been participating in a few pregnancy studies through UNC Hospitals. Since there's no real harm to me in being a part of them, it's basically free money.
One study involves tracking what I eat. You put in all your meals in snacks into the website they provide you with and at the end of the day it tells you how close or far off of typical dietary requirements you were.
Almost every day I see that I'm getting half of the number of calories I'm supposed to get and almost 70% more sodium than I'm supposed to get for a full day....so basically, if I were getting 100% of the calories they claim I need, I'd be a salt lick.
When I asked one of the study coordinators about this, she said it was pretty common because of the amount of processed foods Americans eat. I've noticed that in the meals I cook myself, I can easily control how much or how little salt goes into them other than what exists in certain foods naturally. A sprinkle of salt here and a sprinkle there over the course of dinner does not add up to the 1046 mg overage I've been getting. It's got to be in the ready-to-eat stuff. There's enough salt in me that you can fill me with water and my kid would float to the top.
If you pick up a can of soup - seriously, look at the back of one of those Campbell's Soup at Hand things. That one little half-meal contains like 76% of your day's recommended sodium intake.
I think that's kind of disconcerting. In the past it had been suggested that too much salt is a cause of a variety of health problems, but nothing at this point conclusively shows that it really causes hypertension and stroke. It still freaks me out a little bit.
What freaks me out even more is how much I love a hot Burger King french fry.
Posted by Tiffany at July 12, 2006 10:57 AM | TrackBack