Conquering your salt habit
Salt — sodium chloride — is essential for survival. Your body depends on sodium to transmit nerve impulses, contract muscle fibers, and, along with potassium, to balance fluid levels in all your cells. Because the human body is so good at conserving this vital mineral, you need only a tiny amount of sodium. Some tribes, like the South American Yanomamo Indians, consume a mere 200 mg, or about one-tenth of a teaspoon of salt—per day. Thousands of years ago, when humans roamed the earth gathering and hunting, sodium was scarce. But potassium — found naturally in many plant-based foods — was abundant. In fact, the so-called Paleolithic diet provided about 16 times more potassium than sodium.
Today, the average American diet contains about twice as much sodium as potassium, thanks to the preponderance of salt hidden in processed foods. This sodium-potassium imbalance, which is at odds with how humans evolved, is thought to be a major contributor to high blood pressure. Findings from the Trials of Hypertension Prevention study suggest that changing the balance between these two minerals can help the heart and arteries. Researchers measured the amounts of sodium and potassium excreted over the course of 24 hours by nearly 3,000 volunteers. (The amount excreted is a good stand-in for the amount consumed.) The higher the ratio of sodium to potassium, the greater the chance of having a heart attack or stroke, needing bypass surgery or angioplasty, or dying of cardiovascular disease over 10 to 15 years of follow-up, as described in Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009. To reverse the ratio, choose foods with a high proportion of potassium to sodium (see Table 6).
| Table 6: The power of potassium Most people eat too much sodium and not enough potassium. To counteract this trend, try eating more foods with a high potassium-to-sodium ratio. | |
| Food | Potassium-to-sodium ratio |
| Banana | 422 to 1 |
| Black beans, cooked without salt | 305 to 1 |
| Orange | 232 to 1 |
| Grapefruit juice | 126 to 1 |
| Peanuts, dry roasted, no salt | 93 to 1 |
| Peanuts, dry roasted, with salt | 0.8 to 1 |
| Avocado | 69 to 1 |
| Raisins | 68 to 1 |
| Baked potato, plain, with skin | 54 to 1 |
| Fast-food French fries | 2.5 to 1 |
| Peanut butter, without salt | 42 to 1 |
| Peanut butter, with salt | 1.4 to 1 |
| Brussels sprouts, steamed | 35 to 1 |
| Applesauce (jar), no salt | 31 to 1 |
| Applesauce (jar), with salt | 2.2 to 1 |
| Oatmeal, regular | 18 to 1 |
| Quaker’s Instant Oatmeal | 0.5 to 1 |
| Cantaloupe | 17 to 1 |
| Halibut, baked | 8 to 1 |
| Spinach, boiled | 7 to 1 |
| Salmon, baked | 6 to 1 |
| Salmon, canned | 0.8 to 1 |
| V8, low-sodium | 6 to 1 |
| V8, regular | 1 to 1 |
| Carrots, raw | 5 to 1 |
| Milk, 1% | 3 to 1 |
| Cheerios | 0.9 to 1 |
| Marinara sauce, prepared | 0.8 to 1 |
| Pork and beans, canned | 0.7 to 1 |
| Fast-food cheeseburger | 0.4 to 1 |
| French bread | 0.2 to 1 |
| Cornflakes | 0.1 to 1 |