Hi. Day 2 for me and as its a sunday im researching meals for the week and checking i am getting all i need nutritionally. I thought i was doing well, making everything from scratch, this being breakfast: x2 eggs with spinach and mushrooms, lunch: pea and ham soup, dinner: chicken breast with carrots, broccolli and chard. However when I have added it into my food calculator it says I am way over my healthy sodium levels. More research has told me that carrots, chard and spinach has a huge amount of sodium. This really upsets me actually, as I thought I was doing so well only to find that I am not doing my body any good if my sodium is high. What do others think? Is having high sodium levels from natural raw or slightly cooked veggies bad? Thanks 🙂

Hi Liv,

I will start by saying that I have no medical background but I do have some thoughts about the sodium issue.
In a normal western diet we eat a lot of sodium without even knowing it. Every thing from bread to breakfast cereal and any other processed food we eat is full of sodium. Milk and cheese, especially hard cheese and things like haloumi are very high in sodium. Then there is the snack foods and takeaway foods that we eat for treats, again all loaded with sodium.
In your life pre BSD you may have had toast and cereal with coffee for breakfast, maybe a salad with cheese, ham or salami for lunch and some takeaway for dinner. You would never have even given the sodium a thought unless you were on a low sodium diet for medical reasons.
I am finding that some days I am eating foods with a lot of sodium but that is balanced by days when I eat foods with very little sodium.
Like you most of the sodium I ingest is coming from vegetables. The days that I have lots are the days that I eat cheese as I am not eating any processed foods.
I think that unless you have a medical condition that requires a low sodium diet don’t worry too much and look for balance across the week.
I hope this helps.

wow – sounds really healthy to me Liv
as long as you’re not adding salt when you’re cooking, I wouldn’t worry too much.

It’s probably less salt than you’d consume if you were eating convenience food, and the conditions that are impacted by high salt, such as blood pressure, stroke and heart problems, are also adversely impacted by being overweight.

To be honest I wouldn’t class any vegetables as being high in sodium when compared to other food groups, and as Poppyflower says it’s all the added salt in things that you need to be more wary of – these levels are significantly higher. I’m not sure what calculator you’re using to get your sodium values, is it definitely accurate?

The standard recommendation for adults is to have no more than 6g of salt a day, which is equal to 2.4g of sodium = 2400mg sodium.

Google gives me an average carrot sodium content of 69mg per 100g of carrots… which means you’d need to eat 3.5kg of carrots to hit your daily sodium limit – so I really don’t think you should worry about veg at the levels you’re consuming it at.

A single slice of bread has 400mg = the equivalent of nearly 600g of carrots.

It sounds like you’re having healthy balanced meals, so don’t be so hard on yourself – you’re doing great!!