The May 30, 2010, the New York Times published an article, The Hard Sell on Salt, about our high sodium diets, the reluctance to find ways to lower the amount of salt in food, and how the food industry continues to push for its inclusion in our foods, all despite documented risks to our health in medical research as far back as 1978. In the sidebar are several not-to-be-missed graphics providing information, new to me, about the various ways salt is represented on food labels.
All four of our parents have had chronic health conditions — congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, and stroke–and two died as a result of the illnesses. In all cases, they were instructed to cut back dramatically on salt but modifying their habits has proven to be extremely difficult, though they tried hard.
My husband and I are planning sometime next month to keep track of sodium for two days, though we believe we are consuming a fairly low amount of salt. We intend to avoid any diet modification, trying to eat the way we always do. I’ll be reporting our discoveries in a posting here on As Our Parents Age.
Check out these other posts about my family’s low-sodium adventure.
Aging Parents, Disease of Aging, and Sodium – Low Sodium Diet: Seniors Get Started in their Eighties – Hospital Cafeteria with No Low Sodium Options – Making Sense of Sodium Labels and Numbers – Five Lessons Learned About Cutting Back on Sodium – Cooking and Eating on Vacation – We Kept to the Program on Vacation! – Figuring Out How to Adjust a Much-Loved Thanksgiving Recipe – Making Choices that Lower the Count – New Research About American Sodium Consumption
As Our Parents Age So Do We 