wellness | Nourish Yourself

I guess you really CAN have too much of a good thing. Salt has long been adored by culinarians for its transformative powers over virtually ANY food. And that’s precisely the problem. Over time, we’ve added more and more salt to more and more foods and now we bear significant public health risk as a result.

Excess salt intake most notably leads to high blood pressure, which can lead to increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. Consuming too much salt can also cause water retention or bloating, which are certainly not as dangerous but can be vexing to those trying to maintain their weight or waistline!

I read this NY Times article over the weekend and was blown away by a lot of what I learned. Just a few highlights:

– Processed food accounts for nearly 80% of the salt in the American Diet

– Salt in those foods works with added fat and sugar to achieve flavors that are literally addictive for consumers – consider the old “Betcha Can’t Eat Just One” campaign – this is why!

– Nutrient labels overstate the recommended daily allowance for sodium at 2300mg. Most consumers (children, older adults, people with hypertension) actually should max out around 1500 mg. This makes food labels too lenient for most consumers.

– A 1 c. serving of Cheez-Its delivers 1/3 of the (highest) recommended daily sodium for an adult – salt is added to the dough, the cheese AND sprinkled on top of the baked cracker!

– 3 slices of Oscar Meyer ham has 1/2 of the recommended daily sodium for an adult

– A can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup packs the ENTIRE daily sodium intake into just 150 calories!

One of the saddest things is that food manufacturers feel they have little consumer-driven incentive to reduce the amount of salt in their products because there is no weight-loss or appearance benefit for consumers from salt reduction. This differs from the widespread consumer demand to reduce sugar in products, which led to an onslaught of items sweetened with artificial sweeteners. Since salt reduction presents “only” a health benefit, consumers appear far less motivated to demand change.

And, the truth is, reducing the salt in these products DOES negatively impact the taste. Manufacturers fear that consumers will vote with their wallets and simply stop buying lower-sodium versions of their favorite foods if they no longer taste as good!

So what’s a person to do? It seems that since 80% of our salt intake is coming from processed foods, one logical step is to reduce the number of processed foods we eat! I advocate this approach for lots of reasons, so just add this one to the list. Restaurants are also notorious for over-salting foods, so the more we can cook at home, the better off we probably are when it comes to sodium intake.

Cooking food from fresh ingredients allows us to control the amount of salt we add to just what we need to enhance flavor. This should result in a far lower salt intake overall than if we were eating a diet rich in processed foods. And to top it off, fresh foods often NEED less seasoning because their natural flavors are so amazing.

So, while I’m not throwing out the jar of kosher salt I use for cooking anytime soon, I am committing to being even more cognizant of the sodium content in any processed foods I may buy. Like Cheez-Its. Sheesh.

Note: I’ve been encouraged to do more blogging about the wellness and life topics I often delve into with my clients at Nourish instead of focusing more narrowly on food. I’m up for it! It’s all part of the Decadently Healthful life I try to live and that we at Nourish work with clients to achieve. So in this blog, while I’ll continue to write frequently about food and healthful eating, I’ll also dip into the broader subjects of health and wellness and living a vibrant, abundant LIFE! I’d love to hear from you through comments as I continue to evolve this blog so that it most thoroughly stimulates your thinking and inspires your personal journey to your own decadently healthful life. So here goes….

I’ve been biting off a lot lately – maybe more than I can chew – maybe not. With the arrival of warm weather, a growing business, an incremental consulting opportunity, two preschoolers at home all day, and a new baby arriving in six weeks, there is simply a lot going on that excites me these days! I’m one of those people who is prone to overdoing it. I always believe I have it all under control and that I can manage my life through rigorous scheduling and self-discipline and careful planning…but the truth, in the wise words of Deepak Chopra, is that “Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined.” Or as my father-in-law often quips, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

Sometimes the “things that happen” are small. Last night my 2 year old woke up at midnight with a stomach bug and he and I spent most of the night huddled on the bathroom floor with him whimpering or vomiting or napping and me stroking his head and whispering soothing motherly words while wondering how on earth I’d have the energy to get through the jam-packed upcoming day. And yet here I am. Getting through it with some reserve of energy that presented itself just when I needed it.

And sometimes the things are big. An unexpected turn of events that radically reshapes the plans we had for the rest of our tomorrows. The reserves we require to navigate these changes are far more significant and require more careful cultivation to have available when they are needed. It doesn’t matter if the unexpected event is catastrophic or overwhelmingly joyous – it calls upon us to deliver energy we never knew we had. I’ve had a few of these show up lately too – fortunately all of the joyful variety – but they require energy in order to say “YES” to them!

I often talk to my clients about the idea of creating energy for life’s possibilities. When we dream together about what their very best life would look like and they immediately articulate a clear vision and their path to get there (trust me – sometimes it happens!), I try to get them to leave room in that vision for the unexpected. For the husband’s new job in another city. For the birth of another child. For the blossoming of a hobby into a passion. For an accelerated promotion. For illness or injury or winning the lottery!

When we hold tightly to control over our original plans (and yes, I’m absolutely prone to do this, too) we can miss the even bigger things the world has planned for us. Staying open to the wonder of possibilities – living the questions so to speak – allows for a much richer life.

Yet, to take advantage of those opportunities, we need to have energy in reserve. If life shows up with a big, beautiful, wrapped present and we’re too tired to open it, we simply miss out. There’s rarely a second chance to say YES when life offers us an opportunity.

It’s why I feel so strongly about living a vibrant, energized life and about NOT walking around in a chronic state of depletion. Moments of depletion? Normal. (Just ask the woman who was up all night on the bathroom floor!) But a life of depletion? Daunting! Finding ways to replenish ourselves in small everyday ways (a walk outside at lunchtime, a killer iPod mix for the morning run, a jar of sun tea on the patio) and through bigger, more intentional actions (a spa day, sending the kids to Grandma’s for a weekend, a family summer vacation, a sabbatical or leave of absence) funnels energy into our reserve so it’s there when we most need it. These activities also clear our minds enough to SEE the possibilities set before us. In our daily head-down, fast-paced, don’t-get-in-my-way lives we rarely pick our heads up long enough to see the big gift that may be sitting in front of us. It shows up as a distraction or an obstacle rather than as a possibility.

If you’re living in a state of depletion, you can feel it. Ask yourself why you’re allowing this to happen. What would have to be true to find moments of replenishment? What would it take to carve out a real chunk of time for more intense renewal? What’s stopping you? Your best life is waiting for you to be ready to take it on….

Tag Archives: wellness

Salt – it’s what’s for dinner.

Do You Have the Energy for Life’s Possibilities?