My doctor looked me square in the eye, said 'this is the first time I'm saying this' and told me 'you need to eat more salt'.
It's probably true, 99% of the population eats far too much salt and is told to eat less.
So unless you're like me and make the majority of your food yourself, you need to cut back.
On average, people eat about 3,400 mg of salt per day.
We're actually only supposed to get about 1,500 mg per day.
So that means most people are eating 2 1/4 times what they should be.
Are you one of the people that grabs the salt shaker with every meal? Or how about someone who cooks and automatically adds salt without tasting the food? Do you eat most of your food from a box? Studies have found that there's no one place that were getting the majority of our salt.
Even with Americans eating out more than ever before, we are still getting plenty of salt at home.
Natural foods contain 10% or less of salts on average.
However, prepackaged foods can have 1000 mg or more per serving.
According to some data, the top source of sodium intake in the US are yeast breads, pizza, pasta dishes, cold cuts, condiments, processed meat, processed cheese, desserts and snacks, soups and basically anything that comes in a box.
When you eat too much salt, several things happen.
First your blood pressure goes up, your kidneys, liver and heart have to work overtime, and your hormones become disrupted.
And it starts a vicious cycle of taste related complaints.
The top complaint of people is that food doesn't taste very good when it's natural.
That's because people have become so used to the salt taste that their taste buds have actually adapted to eating so much salt.
The good news is that our taste buds adapt quickly when we eat good foods.
Fresh foods then become tastier and the heavily salted processed foods taste bad.
It doesn't take much work to pay attention to how much salt you getting a day.
If you eating food that comes in a box, just calculate up to 1500.
However, if you're eating food from a box, you're not getting very many nutrients.
So you have to supplement with expensive pills or regular food.
Healthy, nutritious food does not contain a lot of sodium, so you don't even have to bother with counting.
These types of foods are fruits, vegetables and whole cuts of meat.
This is the type of food I eat, with few exceptions, and I have to consciously add salt to my food in order to get enough sodium.
So here's the key for reducing your salt intake, eat more fruits, vegetables and whole cuts of meat.
By eliminating the box, you eliminate a lot of salt and add tremendous nutrients to your diet.
And the key to making food taste good is lots of herbs and spices.