Surprising and Hidden Sources of Salt

Since keeping track of salt in foods, every day continues to bring surprises. Today I learned that one stalk of celery has 35mg of sodium. Whoa! By contrast, a one cup serving of red peppers comes in at 4mg. As time consuming as it is, I know that gathering this info will make it easier to make good choices about what I eat and what I don't.

There are many ways to gather the info but it's in the measuring of your own servings that really determine how much salt is in your food. This salad is yummy but when I started adding it all up, I found it hard to figure out how much sodium may be in it.

I'm still clearing out some of the foods that have already been purchased like canned black beans, so the best I could do was drain and rinse these.

But the real biggie is the chicken. Sources tally sodium content based on portion size and cooking method. I am still not sure how much is in the chicken portion. Why? I don't know if it is salt water plumped, or enhanced with chicken broth. That's my first priority next time I go shopping. This practice of plumping chicken has been going on since 1970, and although I think the chicken I buy is not plumped, I need to make sure. And who knows if they even tell the truth.

This salad contains romaine lettuce, fresh cucumber, red peppers, celery, black beans, shredded chicken and is topped with one spoonful of Greek yogurt, one spoonful of pico de gallo from the deli case and black pepper. As best as I can figure, the bottom line is between 500-600 mg of sodium. Upon reflection, too much for a medium salad. My intake for the day so far was about 700 under the 1500 limit. Then I got hungry later in the evening and had a piece and a half of sourdough toast and caved by adding some butter. Yes, it was no salt butter, but bread and butter nonetheless.

Final for the day. Approximately 1200mg of sodium.

What do you think? Is the salad worth the sodium?