Things You'll Need:
- Flavor alternatives such as salsa, hot sauce and seasonings
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Step 1
Get checked out by your doctor.Consult your doctor before you change your diet. Not everyone needs to cut down on their salt and if you are healthy and feeling good, your salt intake may be just right for you. Only your doctor can know for sure by giving you an exam and maybe running a few tests. Remember that salt and sodium are not the same thing. Sodium is a mineral that our bodies need to function correctly and can combine with many different things besides chloride. So table salt is just one of the salts that sodium produces.
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Step 2
1 tsp. of table salt contains 2400 mg of sodium.Learn how to understand food labels. They tell you how much sodium the food contains. With this information you can easily figure out how much salt the food has by multiplying the amount of sodium by 2.5. So if a can of soup has 770 mg of sodium, it contains 1925 mg of salt. Make sure you get at least 150 mg of sodium, but the American Heart Association says that we shouldn't go over 2300 mg per day. Most of us should aim for 500 mg per day; 1 tsp. of salt contains 2400 mg of sodium, and most people in the United States consume 1 to 3 tsp. of salt per day.
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Step 3
Salsa is a good salt substitute.Remove the table salt from your table. Salt brings out the flavor in food and that's why we use it. It is an acquired taste but we can eliminate it and usually within a month or so won't notice its absence. Adding salt at the table to our food is the first place to start to cut down. If we eat a variety of food we will naturally get the amount of sodium that we need. Flavor your food by using a salt substitute. If you don't like the taste of these, you can use a combination of seasonings that do not contain salt. Mrs. Dash is one such brand and has many different seasoning combinations that work well with food. Another alternative is to use a low or no sodium salsa or hot sauce to spice up bland foods.
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Step 4
Canned food is a high-sodium culprit. Opt for fresh or frozen when you can.Avoid canned foods, as they contain a great deal of sodium. If you have a choice of buying frozen or canned, frozen is a much better choice. The important thing is to pay attention to what you are eating, take the table salt off the table, and read food labels carefully.
