My Love Affair ... With Salt

Today marks 10 full days post my first visit with my cardiologist.  In those 10 days I have spent countless hours learning about my love affair with salt.  Memories of a recent sermon float in and out at least once a day.  In that sermon, our pastor talked about Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men."  The phrase "Stay salty, my friend" is what I remember most.  Jesus, I believe, meant that His disciples were to serve as preservatives (salt), stopping the moral decay in the world.  I could write more on this, however I want to focus more on the physical aspects of "being salty".

I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that the human body requires sodium, a crucial electrolyte, to function.  If you are relatively healthy and your doctor hasn't had the "cut back on added sodium" conversation with you, there is probably no reason for you to be concerned with moderate intakes of sodium.  Because my brain works the way it does, until it becomes a firmly established routine, I'm likely going to obsessively count each milligram … for everyone else I did see a bit of very common sense advice … 1) eat real food, 2) add salt when appropriate to make your food taste good … that's it.

As I noted in my last blog post, because of a family history of heart issues and congestive heart failure, my cardiologist is having me weight myself daily to help keep the fluid retention in check.  If I gain more than 2 pounds in a day I am to call my cardiologist.  As of this morning (1/22/18), 10 days after starting Lasix, I have shed 34 pounds of fluid weight.  The edema is gone from my legs, feet and ankles.  I no longer struggle to catch my breath.  The breathing issue was the most concerning to me.  It was having an impact on daily activities.  It got to a point where I was having to make choices between washing clothes and washing dishes - I only had enough stamina to complete one or the other.  While this doesn't make me like household chores any more than I did previously, I was pretty excited to get all of the laundry done in one day this weekend!

When I was a child, I remember Dad having to watch his sodium intake and it became habit to taste my food before adding seasoning.  I do love salt and prefer flaky sea salt over table salt - despite this affinity to salt, I usually do not add salt to prepared foods.  SO, where was the extra sodium coming from?  After getting over the shock of "no more cheese" I started taking a closer look at the sodium content of the foods that I normally buy.  I've been reading labels since I was pregnant because I had gestational diabetes and have remained conscious of the number and kind of carbohydrates I am eating.  I have never had a reason to keep track of sodium content until now - and I was surprised by some of the things I found.

I love salads, lettuce, veggies are, with the right dressing, a very low sodium choice … wouldn't you think?  Not at Arby's it isn't.  There isn't that much roast turkey, bacon or cheese on the Roast Turkey Farmhouse Salad and it is a healthier choice than the Smokehouse Chicken sandwich … choosing the salad over the sandwich saved me 300 calories and 1130 mg of sodium - however the salad still added 870 mg of sodium to that day's intake - without dressing!  That salad represented 44% of the 2,000 mg I am currently trying to stay under (this is bound to change after my next doctor visit).

Another sad surprise, at least to me, is the amount of sodium contained in a bag of the microwave popcorn I bought from the Boy Scouts this fall.  One bag of popped corn (about 4 cups) has 890 mg of sodium - compared to my other favorite, oil popped popcorn, the same amount of popcorn brings with it only 2 mg of sodium.  I know that air popped popcorn would be even healthier for me, but I've never liked air popped & today I'm writing about sodium, not fat.

I grew up with farm grown veggies and beef (plus a variety of wild game that we hunted locally) - we had some packaged meals, but mostly it was food that Mom made from scratch.  While in college and the early years of my first marriage, I turned to processed foods because they were a more affordable option for us.  After I had my son I tried to make more meals from scratch, but we were still on a tight budget and fresh foods seemed to be a luxury.  I'm not going to go back through my old food journals, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that I was routinely consuming an average of 3,500 mg of sodium daily basis.  No more … right now my average consumption is hovering just under 1,700 mg!

I'm just beginning to relearn how to cook with fresh ingredients and it has been kind of challenging for me.  By the time I pick my son up after work we are both dangerously close to the "hangry" stage and "here, have an apple while I make dinner" doesn't even work on me, let alone the starving 9-year-old.  Maybe the next segment of this adventure will include freezer meals that I will feel good about the child eating…  If you have any favorite recipes or websites that give a good breakdown of how to package up individual servings of yummy lower sodium, made from scratch with love meals, please let me know!!