Imagine pouring one and a half teaspoons of salt directly into your mouth. Can you taste it? Blah, blech! You’d shed an ocean of tears trying to choke down those tongue-tingling crystals.

Yet, if you’re a typical American, you eat that much salt every single day. And that’s one primary reason why 50 percent of us are considered at risk for high blood pressure.

I know, that sounds impossible—you seldom if ever reach for the salt shaker, right? Well, you don’t have to: Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that most of us consume about 3,400 mg of sodium a day, but only 5 percent of it comes from home cooking. Some occurs in foods naturally, but the overwhelming majority of the sodium you eat—77 percent—comes foods sold in supermarkets and restaurants. Heart disease is the number-one killer of Americans, and sodium is one of the primary culprits.

We should be eating no more than 2,300 mg a day, and less—about 1,500 mg—if we’re at risk for high blood pressure. And yet, while researching my latest book, The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet, I uncovered countless restaurant meals with one, two, even three days’ worth of salt in them. Think I’m exaggerating? Take a peek at the saltiest dishes coming from America’s kitchens.

1. WORST PASTA: Ruby Tuesday Mediterranean Shrimp Pasta
3,933 mg sodium
1,086 calories
63 g fat

Sodium Equivalent: 11 Large Orders of McDonald’s French Fries

Somebody needs to tell Ruby Tuesday that to make “Mediterranean” pasta, you don’t need to actually boil the noodles in Mediterranean seawater. Ruby Tuesday makes only one pasta dish with fewer than 2,000 mg of sodium (almost an entire day’s worth!), and it has only two pasta dishes with fewer than 3,000 mg. The other four pasta dishes on the menu each have more than 3,000 mg.

2. WORST BREAKFAST:IHOP Thick-Cut Bone-In Ham & Eggs
4,310 mg sodium
1,170 calories
61 g fat (19 g saturated)

Sodium Equivalent: 37 servings of Planter’s Cocktail Peanuts (that’s more than three 12-oz cans!)

IHOP is another chain known for egregious sodium levels. Even foods that sound relatively sodium-free are swimming in the stuff. Take an order of Buttermilk Pancakes. One order—5 pancakes—has 2,640 mg sodium. Things turn especially ugly when you start adding meat to the plate. You’d be wise to avoid any dish with steak or ham, which consistently contribute to a total of more than 2,000 mg per dish.

3. WORST “HEALTHY” ENTREE: Applebee’s Weight Watchers Chipotle Lime Chicken
4,990 mg sodium
490 calories
12 g fat (2 g saturated)

Sodium Equivalent: 31 servings of Ruffles (that’s more than two “Family Size” bags!)

Avoiding salt at Applebee’s is nearly impossible. Not even the “healthy” selections pass muster. The six items on the Under 550 Calories menu average 2,341 mg of sodium per entree. The five items on the Weight Watchers menu average 2,448 mg. Even the side dishes are dangerous. A side of Loaded Mashed Potatoes will cost you 1,340 mg, and a side of Broccoli Cheddar Soup will cost you 1,690. If you order anything off this menu, you’d be wise to stick to sodium-free foods for the rest of the day.

4. SALTIEST APPETIZER: Applebee’s Appetizer Sampler
6,830 mg sodium
2,590 calories
173 g fat (54 g saturated)

Sodium Equivalent: 370 Funyuns (that’s more than four bags of ‘em!)

Restaurant appetizer samplers are notoriously riddled with sodium, but Applebee’s is a full-blown tour de force of heart-stopping potential. Piled onto this plate are a bacon and cheese quesadilla, fried cheese sticks, spinach and artichoke dip and chips, and boneless buffalo wings. Just one of those things is bad enough, but add all four and you have three days’ worth of sodium and more than an entire day of calories—in just one appetizer!

5. SALTIEST CHINESE: P.F. Chang’s Double Pan-Fried Noodles with Pork
7,900 mg sodium
1,652 calories
84 g fat (12 g saturated)

Sodium Equivalent: 263 Triscuit crackers (that’s 4.3 boxes!)

PF Changs’ menu is probably the saltiest in America; even a bowl of Hot and Sour Soup has 5,000 mg. For that half of the population that’s supposed to max out at 1,500 mg daily sodium, the Double Pan-Fried Noodles with Pork harbors more than five times the limit. Even for those in the higher tier, it still represents three-and-a-half days worth of sodium consumption. If you end up at Chang’s, let the Steamed Buddha Bowl be your safety plate. But remember: It’s got to be steamed. Order it stir-fried and the same dish suddenly leaps to 2,740 mg sodium. Yikes.

Information provided by Menshealth.com

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McDonald’s and plenty of other fast food chains are all jumping on the “healthy” food bandwagon. But don’t let the marketing schemes fool you. Take McDonald’s for example,(they are the most widely known with some of the best marketing) we showed you how their Perfect Oatmeal wasn’t so perfect and now let’s take a look at how their salads aren’t any better.

McDonald’s isn’t the only fast food restaurant creating salad disasters. Burger King’s Chicken Caesar Salad has more fat and calories than a BK Double Hamburger. Wendy’s Taco Supreme Salad is very high in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium.

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Foodfacts cholesterol, diabetes, diet, food, food facts, FoodFacts.com, health, healthy eating, march 2011, McDonald's, nutrition, restaurants, salt, Uncategorized Big Mac, Burger King, fast food, oatmeal, salads, Wendy's

Salt | Foodfacts.com

Foodfacts.com observes that salt is becoming a bit of a food baddie. That’s not a true representation of it from a health point of view – we need salt to keep our muscles and nerves working and it does a myriad of other good things in our body. However, too much can store up health problems for later. One of the problems is that most of us don’t actually know how much salt we take in everyday so it can be hard to cut down. Read more…

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Geoff diet, health, salt salt

Americans love their salt and it is difficult to completely avoid salt in our food supply and often consume it without even knowing it. Researchers have found that many of our food products have the highest sodium levels in the world so it is no surprise that the average person in the United States and Canada consumes over 3,000 mg of sodium each day, which is a whopping double the recommended amount! Read more…

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Geoff salt sodium

Salt

Looking back through history, salt has probably been the single most influential foodstuff known. Did you know that salt funded the construction of China’s Great Wall? It helped to carve out trade routes, gave rise to Europe’s great cities, ignited wars, fueled centuries of political discourse, helped spark the French Revolution, and was a focal point the struggle for Indian independence. Read more…

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Geoff salt salt, sodium

A news report from Food Navigator presented an interesting situation of concern to consumers: there is new research regarding salt levels in global products from some of the biggest food manufacturers. Disturbingly, it has revealed wide and random variations.

The news report indicates that, in a survey of 260 global food products from manufacturers such as Nestle, KFC and Kellogg’s, the World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) found that people in some countries are being fed over twice as much salt in popular global brands as their counterparts in other parts of the world.

Spokesperson Katharine Jenner told Food Navigator that more often than not there was no logic behind the differences.

Kellogg’s All Bran, for example, contains 2.15g of salt per 100g in Canada, but only 0.65g of salt per 100g just over the border in the US, less than a third of the Canadian level.

KFC in New Zealand throws up one of the most confusing differences. The KFC Twister product in New Zealand has the lowest salt content per portion in the global survey, whereas its Fillet Burger has the highest.

Jenner said KFC may well not be aware of this difference. She said these variations seem to have no good reasons behind them and are most likely to be the random consequence of local manufacturing choices.

Read more about it here.

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