How to Follow a Low-Salt Diet

Ok, so you've been told you need to follow a low-salt diet. Now what? How do you do that?

Try to understand why you need to be on this diet. The American diet contains a lot of hidden salt. So, even if you don't ever pick up your salt shaker, you probably eat too much salt. Coming off of salt, may be harder than you think.


 Knowing why it is important helps you stick to it when the going gets tough. Usually a low-salt diet is prescribed to minimize effects on your heart or cardiovascular system....maybe you have CHF or High Blood Pressure. For information on how salt affects blood pressure click here.

First, find out what your daily salt limit is. This may vary depending on your health condition, but usually is between 1800 mg and 2000 mg of sodium per day.  This means everything you consume has to add up to less than the total amount for each day. So, if your breakfast consisted of 500 mg of salt and your lunch had 1100 mg of salt, this only leaves about 200 mg of salt for supper. Remember that drinks count too! This is very similar to calorie counting, so get ready to do some math!

The key to following a low-salt diet is learning to count every ingredient in your recipes or dishes. You may not think that cheese slices have salt, but they do. Spice mixes like "Lemon Pepper" also contain salt. So, be careful and count everything!

Learn your "free" ingredients. Some items are naturally free of salt. Fresh fruit, cream, unsalted butter, wine, fresh vegetables, most sour creams, single spices (not mixes), water, etc. Use these ingredients to bump up your recipes with flavor without adding salt.  I will discuss this more in detail on another post.

Know that "No Salt Added" does not mean "Salt-Free." It just means that no extra salt was added to the food.

Stay away from canned or frozen foods. These products have added salt to help preserve the food which extends the shelf life. If you have to buy these look for the "no salt added" items. If you use canned foods, rinse them first. This eliminates about 30% of the salt content.

Avoid fast food if you can. This is like combining canned food with frozen food and this means a lot of salt! You can go over your daily total with one combo meal!

There are more tips to come, but this is enough to get you started. Check out my other posts for some recipes.