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Wednesday, June 24, 2009 08:38 PM
The end is here
It seemed like a simple enough challenge, but I failed miserably and consistently.
The challenge went like this: For five days, try to keep your sodium intake to the daily recommended limit of 1,500 mg.
I knew going into it that I love salt. I love salt. But it was exactly because I love salt that I was interested in being put to the test.
Link to this postWednesday, June 24, 2009 12:44 PM
The last day of this little experiment
Right about now I should be flying over Canada and I'm going to venture a guess that low-sodium eating at 30, 000 feet sucks just as much as it does on the ground. In fact, it might even be worse. I won't be able to eat that bag of little pretzels the flight attendants hand out. I love those little pretzels.
Fortunately, I won't be starving. It's WestJet policy that passengers are allowed to bring food of their own aboard flights. I'm going to bring an apple. Wa-hoo!
Most fortunate of all, really, is that this is the last day of this little experiment. While it's true that I've failed miserably to limit my sodium intake to the daily recommended limit of 1, 500 mg day in and day out, I'll be glad to stop eating so much bloody salad.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 09:16 AM
Why is there so much sodium in my cereal?
Throughout this little experiment, breakfast has always been the most surprising and depressing meal of the day, and today was no exception.
I guess I suppose that I expect lunch and dinner to be high in sodium. No one has pizza for breakfast, right? (Well, not in a while, anyways).
And of course there’s the notion of breakfast being the most important meal of the day—something that’s drilled into us from a young age—which helps prompt the assumption that companies that make breakfast foods would try to make them as healthy and nutritional as possible.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:45 PM
A pizza pie chart
If you’re looking at the picture that accompanies this post and all you see is pizza then you’re only seeing half the truth.
Yes, that’s what I ate for dinner tonight. But it’s also a pie chart representing how much of my spirit has been totally defeated by this whole experiment.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 08:41 PM
I'd do anything for a few shakes of salt
Have you ever seen the movie Ghost? It’s important that you have in order to understand how I’m feeling right now.
There’s a scene in the movie where Patrick Swayze is on a subway when he encounters a scary bald guy dressed all in black who is also a ghost. This ghost, however, knows how to move objects. He can shove people out of the way, he can open doors, etc. It’s obviously a skill Swayze would like to have. So he begs scary ghost guy to teach him and eventually the two are on a deserted subway platform.
At one point during the training, one of the ghosts—I can’t remember who—breaks a cigarette vending machine and packs of butts come pouring out. The scary ghost—who was obviously a diehard smoker back when he had lungs and the other joys of corporeality—sees them and drops on his hands and knees and says in the most pathetic, pleading, defeated tone you’ve ever heard, “I’d do anything for a drag.”
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 04:40 PM
In every possible universe, I ate a healthy lunch
Just before lunch I was feeling like a drug addict who hasn’t scored in a few days. I was ready to snort a line of table salt until I took a deep breath, reminded myself that no one said this was going to be easy, and opted to make a tuna sandwich instead. It’s the chicken of the sea, and it makes me cry.
Were I to tell anyone that for lunch I had a tuna sandwich on flaxbread with 8 baby carrots and a glass of water I would expect something like the following reply: “Wow, Dave, you sure are healthy! You didn’t even sprinkle a little salt into the tuna the way you usually do. Let me repeat how incredibly healthy you are.”
Indeed.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 05:33 PM
Breakfast: 311 mg sodium
Thanks to all the commenters who have been good enough to offer suggestions of what to eat. You’re the salt of the earth. I would sprinkle you on my food if I could.
Breakfast has always been a challenge during this whole experiment. Granted, the stop at McDonalds wasn’t. I keep blowing way more than I should to have a chance of meeting the daily recommended intake of 1,500 mg of sodium.
This morning, I decided to follow the advice of West Coast Girl, who suggested the following menu:
Monday, June 22, 2009 07:40 PM
Welcome to the salad days
These are salad days, people. Please don’t take that to mean, as it usually does, a time of youthful enthusiasm and idealism. Far from it.
I mean it quite literally: I’m eating a lot of salad.
That’s right, in order to meet the daily recommended intake of sodium for a person my age (1, 500 mg) I’m going to eat the same salad for dinner that I had for lunch, minus the dressing. Grand sodium total:
200 mg.
Monday, June 22, 2009 03:33 PM
Even carrots have sodium
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, because while Canada Day fireworks are more than a week away you’re just in time to see a grown man’s head explode.
This morning, I ate what I would have sworn was one of the healthiest breakfasts I’ve ever had. But it turns out its total sodium content, 700 mg, was just less than half my daily recommended intake.
It was disheartening, to say the least.
But I would not be defeated. I went jogging since a) the warm weather is making me feel a bit doughy and b) now that I know I'm ingesting this much sodium I damn well better do something to compensate.
Then, after my run, I was feeling all healthy. Yeah, healthy! Feels good! You know what, I said to myself, I’m going to have a salad for lunch. Yeah! A salad! Forget about eating an entire bag of chips. I’m going to eat an entire bag of baby carrots. But even doing that would cut way too much into how much wiggle room I have left for the day.
So instead I pathetically counted out 16 carrots (80 mg of sodium), a few radishes (20 mg) a quarter cup of chick peas from a can (100 mg), a quarter cup of broccoli and what seemed like a tear drop’s worth of Newman’s Own Oil & Vinegar dressing but was actually two tablespoons worth (320 mg). I know, I know. I should have foregone the dressing.
But I need to live a little. And it’s not like I was spraying the dressing around like a fireman putting out a blaze—we’re talking two tablespoons here, people!
Still, even if I did leave the dressing out of the equation I still would have consumed at least 200 mg of sodium from carrots and peas.
How can I win? I thought I was being all healthy and it turns out I ate 520 mg of sodium, or a little more than one-third of the daily recommended limit. That also means I must eat a dinner with no more than 280 mg of sodium in order to stay within the daily limit.
I suppose I could have the same salad for lunch that I had for dinner, minus the salad dressing. If it comes to that, anyone who's all geared up for some head exploding action should be at my place to watch the show.
One last note before my skull goes ka-boom. If anyone out there is curious to know just how much sodium there is in a one-pound bag of baby carrots, the answer is just over 242 mg, or just slightly more than 1/6 the daily recommended intake level.
Monday, June 22, 2009 12:32 PM
A healthy breakfast?
You know how Sisyphus had to keep trying to roll a rock to the top of that hill but before he got there it would roll back down and he’d have to start over again and after a while he must have been thinking, “Man, this sucks. This is impossible.” Well, welcome to my rock.
This morning I put together the healthiest breakfast I could think of: peanut butter and banana on toast with a cup of yogurt and a glass of milk. Clearly this would get me well ahead of the curve. I would have so much room left in my daily recommended sodium limit that I could gorge on chips in the afternoon should I choose. Right?
Totally and completely wrong.
The Sodium Diaries Contributors
Dave McGinn
Dave McGinn is a Toronto-based freelance writer. A frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail, his writing covers a range of subjects. He probably eats too much salt.