Facts About Salt

Salt is an acquired taste.  Americans crave salt in their diets, but our preference for salty foods is a learned taste.  If you slowly cut down on the amount of sodium you eat, your desire for salt will actually decrease. And that's a good thing, because reducing dietary salt may help reduce your blood pressure even more than exercise - although it's important to do both.

Taking your salt shaker off the table is a good start. But only 18% of the salt in our diets comes from salt added during cooking or at the table.

It's also important to watch for the sodium content in processed, canned, and snack foods which can be surprisingly high in salt. The American Heart Association recommends 2,400 mg of sodium per day for healthy people, and one-half cup of prepared spaghetti sauce contains 590 mg, nearly 1/4 of that amount. The average American diet contains 3,300 mg daily and is sometimes as high as 5,000 mg. To give you a feeling for proportions, one teaspoon of salt contains 2,196 mg.

Sources:  American Heart Association; Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Vol 38, Pg. 506