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Course: Health and medicine > Unit 10
Lesson 6: BMI and dietSpotting salty foods
Find out how much sodium is in some common foods and how you can maintain a low sodium diet. Rishi is a pediatric infectious disease physician and works at Khan Academy. Created by Rishi Desai.
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- I don't get it, is salt bad for you? Thanks.(17 votes)
- You need to have salt in your body, and it is closely regulated by the kidneys. It is a rapid change in sodium levels in the blood that is bad for you, or if you go over or under normal values (137-145mmol/L)
If you are low on sodium (salt), you get hyponatremia (as Jim Hannon has stated), which makes the blood hypotonic (isotonic is what we want - homeostasis). This means that the water in the blood goes over to other tissues in the body through osmosis. This is especially critical for the brain, and can cause brain swelling which can have severe consequenses (coma, even death). The opposite goes for hypernatremia - high sodium.
You can get problems with you sodium levels in different ways, for example dehydration, diuretics, high intake of sodium, kidney problems, high intake of water over a short period of time etc.(4 votes)
- is there a difference in salt/sodium levels when you roast your food?(11 votes)
- Not exactly, I assume that your question relates to the fact that some of the roasted foods he mentioned in the video just happened to be low in sodium. The reason why the salmon, potatoes, and asparagus are low in sodium is because they are natural whole foods, how they are cooked is not relevant. Whole foods typically tend to be lower in sodium and better for your health unlike processed foods (example: the cups noodles mentioned at1:40in the video). But that is not to say that salt/sodium in general is bad for you, in fact consuming a high quality sea salt (example: unprocessed celtic sea salt) in moderation is essential to a healthy lifestyle, it contains several nutrients that your body needs. Table salt on the hand should be avoided at all costs.(6 votes)
- Is there ever a situation where you need a higher daily sodium intake?(7 votes)
- If you are working hard outside in hot conditions, or doing sports in the sun for a longer period, it might be needed to take salt tablets. But then you need to drink lots of water as well. This is because of sweat, which as you probably know, is salty.(8 votes)
- It seems that it's the processed food that has high levels of salt - are there any foods that naturally (e.g. unprocessed meat, vegetables etc.) have very high levels of salt?(7 votes)
- Unprocessed foods (even with more sodium than other unprocessed foods) still have significantly less sodium and are not as bad for health than processed foods
more “natural” foods that tend to count as “having high sodium“ are:
Fish/shrimp
Cheese
Milk
Meat
[as you can see, it is the things recommended to be eaten in moderation on the food guides]
The vegetable with the most sodium is cardoon: 303 milligrams in 1 cup of shredded cardoon
But that is nothing compared to the amount of sodium in processed foods these days.
Sources:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-sodium
https://sodiumbreakup.heart.org/top_25_foods_that_add_the_most_sodium_to_your_diet
https://www.livestrong.com/article/274237-high-sodium-vegetables-fruits/(1 vote)
- Will it make any difference if you do your own fries in your house instead of buying them at another place? Will the ammount of sodium change?not including the ketchup.(4 votes)
- cooking fries at home allows you to control the amount of salt added or the option to not add salt(1 vote)
- why dose your body need a little bit of salt everyone says that salt is bad for you(1 vote)
- Slat is another mineral needed in your body. That doesn't mean that you should take too much.(1 vote)
- why almost everybody says salt and sodium are the same thing so you only need 1 but you really need both.............sorry that was for the low salt diet video on Khan Acadamey(2 votes)
- Chemically, salt is NaCl (Na = Sodium / Cl = Chloride) so it has sodium in it, but it's not the same thing to say sodium = salt. However, salt is one of the easiest ways / most convenient ways to get sodium into the body as it is easily absorbed and readily available.
FYI - Sodium by itself is highly reactive and would explode if it touched water, and Chlorine by itself is a poisonous gas. Combined though, they are essential to life!(3 votes)
- If we only ever eat fresh non processed foods can we get enough sodium?(3 votes)
- Knowing that you have access to the internet, you cannot experience a lack of sodium on accident. There is simply too much of it in the modern diet. You would have to make an incredible effort to find very low Na foods that are actually edible.(1 vote)
- why is there so much salt and sodium in fast food?(1 vote)
- Usually these foods are heavily processed, sodium is used as a preservative. There are also a lot of foods sold as convenience foods that are cured, these are also extremely high in sodium because of the curing process.(3 votes)
- To much salt makes me really sick but i do not know how it does(1 vote)
- Salt is a compound that holds water in your body. Too much salt means to much water. The water fills your veins and can lead to high blood pressure.(4 votes)
Video transcript
So keeping in mind how much
salt you should be taking in, if you're on a low-sodium diet. And I'm just going to write
that here "low sodium diet." I was thinking of all the
foods that I typically like to consume, and where
that fits into the amount that I'm allowed in a given day. So if I'm on a low-sodium
diet, the amount, we said, was about 1,500 milligrams
of sodium per day. And this is sodium
not salt, remember. And if I go through
a few foods, I thought it would be
fun to figure out how much sodium
is in these foods. So let's start
out with something I had not too long ago. I was recently on a road
trip and I stopped off on the side of the
road and I picked up one of my favorite
little snacks, which was a large carton of fries. So I had some fries,
and they were delicious. So these large fries. And I actually love to
eat fries with ketchup. So I had five ketchup packets. So that was one food item. And another food item I've had
many, many times, especially when I'm kind of in a big
rush and I don't have time to go out and get
a proper lunch, I'll sit down and
grab a cup of noodles. So I'll grab a cup of noodles. And if you've had
these, they basically are dehydrated noodles
that are in here. And if you're like
me, you love them. But this is a cup of noodles. This was another item I thought
would be good to look at. And the last item is actually
similar to the cup of noodles. It's actually not a cup
of noodles, but the kind that you might take
when you're sick. So whenever I'm sick, one of
the things I always reach for is a pot of water. And I like to boil
up the water and cook a block of noodles inside of it. Put the flavoring packet
there, and this is again, these are the
dehydrated noodles. And I like to eat those. And so these are my dehydrated
noodles in a pot of water. And I'll call that
a block of noodles. And I usually eat
one whole block at a time with the flavoring. So, I've got a few things
here, a block of noodles, cup of noodles, and also my
large fries with ketchup. And I know my limit is
1,500 milligrams in a day. So how far along do
these things get me? So one by one, let me
just tell you the answer. The large fries with packets
of ketchup, five packets, is about 900
milligrams of sodium. The cup of noodles is about
1,200 milligrams of sodium. And you can see I'm
going up, up, up. And so my block of
noodles is actually 1600 milligrams of sodium. So actually this one
puts me over the amount that I'm allowed in a whole day. And that's actually,
usually what I would have just for lunch. And so it's an immense amount
of sodium, tons of sodium. And so it got me thinking,
how in the world-- I'm not actually on a
low-sodium diet-- but If I was, how in the world would
I be able to do it? And so I was
browsing the internet and I came across
a website, which I'm going to share with you. And it's basically
from the Mayo Clinic. And actually, I don't want to
say this is the only website. There are tons of great
websites out there. But this one website
actually got me thinking. And so what I thought
is, why don't I figure out what kind of
food I could actually get. If I was on a low-sodium
diet, what would make sense? And so I picked out a few
things from their website that I thought would be tasty. They have one thing,
that's roasted salmon. This is my salmon. And if I eat the roasted salmon
with olive oil and chives, the amount of sodium
is 60 milligrams. Not bad, right? And let's say I want to eat
that with some potatoes. So I got some roasted
potatoes over here. Which I love roasted
potatoes, so does my dad. And these roasted potatoes
get me 7 milligrams of sodium. So this is my roasted potatoes,
7 milligrams of sodium. It actually dropped
the "e" there, sorry. So, potatoes are
great, salmon is great, but I like my vegetables. So what if I get some
asparagus in there? So some roasted
asparagus, and there's a recipe for some mushrooms
with the roasted asparagus. This meal is looking
better and better. And so if I get some
asparagus with the mushrooms, that's an additional 11
milligrams of sodium. So it's actually
pretty reasonable. And in fact, since
I'm doing so well, I actually was tempted to
go to their dessert menu. And I actually grabbed one
of the recipes for apple pie. And apple pie is an
American favorite, certainly one of my favorites. And I love to make apple pie. And that gets me about
16 milligrams of sodium. So if I'm totalling
all this up, I have-- I'll do it
in the corner here. I've got, let's say, 60
plus 7 plus 11 plus 16. And that total
comes to, let's see, 71, 78, 88, 94
milligrams of sodium. And so 94 milligrams
of sodium is well within my limit of 1,500
milligrams of sodium per day. So this is one place you
can go to get some good food recommendations. As I said, there are
many, many others as well.