I once bought a variety of frozen sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches that were delicious, then I noticed the label said 33% sodium. I figured this was way too much sodium so, how much is too much?
I assume you mean 33% of the daily allowance, not the actual sandwiches were 33% sodium (in which case they would not be delicious).
But it’s going to depend on any health conditions, how much of your diet those sandwiches make up, what else you eat, and so on.
If those sandwiches make up a third of your dietary calories for the day (and I assume they do, since they tend to be very caloric, too), having the sodium also be 33% would be fine for most people.
WHO recommends a teaspoon a day, for adults. That’s about 2700mg.
People with hypertension are often instructed to reduce their intake to 1200-1400 mg per day. How strictly that need be adhered to, has to do with how reactive your body is to sodium, I believe.
Sausages are indeed a very high sodium product, with a bun, it’s easy to hit 2700mg without condiments! Daily intake in one meal!
Also if you’re eating take out or restaurant food you’re getting tons if sodium. Start reading labels, you’ll be in for a shock!
You get a lot more salt from processed food than from sprinkling it from the shaker, or so it said. I know people who aren’t done sprinkling salt until their food looks snow covered.
I’ve given up adding salt for most of what I cook. It’s rarely important to the flavor and I can just salt it when I eat if it’s needed.
30-33% of RDA is quite common in processed foods, and that’s per serving which is usually less than what I want for a serving. For anyone at risk avoiding processed foods is a necessity, however life without sausage is not worth living. So I try to keep down the salt intake for everything else and splurge once and a while on the goodies.
Jared Diamond’s latest book -The World Until Yesterday - has a whole chapter on salt intake in the modern world vs. traditional diets. The gist is that human bodies have developed multiple mechanisms for retaining scarce salt. This backfires in modern times where salt is plentiful and people consume too much.
The outcome is that* some* people experience various levels of high blood pressure depending on salt intake. however, as Tripolar points out, with most normal foods, the salt content is so high that it’s almost impossible to avoid taking in the daily recommended maximum.
WHO seems behind the latest research, which shows that less than 2.3 grams of sodium a day increases mortality. RDA of 2.7 is too close for comfort.
If I remember correctly, the lowest overall average mortality was in the region of 4-5 g. Problem is that there is quite a large variance of how well an individual is able to homeostat the sodium and this happens in both directions.
Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk