Everyone is trying to eat healthier these days. In my house salt shaker is reserved only for guests, and I never even look at the salt can while cooking, despite all the nasty comments from the relatives: “How can you cook without salt!”.

But it seems that even such drastic measures are not enough to keep the sodium level at bay:

Even if you never touch a salt shaker and steer clear of potato chips and french fries, you are probably eating more salt than you think and much more than is good for you, an investigation from Consumer Reports shows.

How about a healthy breakfast: whole wheat bagel with some yummy innocent looking maple syrup oatmeal? Sounds very good and healthy, yet it turns out it is loaded with salt:

Breakfast foods were an unexpected source of hidden salt. A popular whole-grain bagel had 440 milligrams of sodium, a best-selling pancake mix had 200 milligrams per pancake, and raisin-bran cereals had between 230 milligrams and 350 milligrams per cup serving. A maple and brown sugar-flavored instant oatmeal had more than three times as much sodium as its original flavored version.

Wow! How about a healthy lunch with Caesar salad?

A Premium Caesar Salad with grilled chicken from McDonald’s had more than twice the salt (890 milligrams) as a large order of McDonald’s fries (350 milligrams). And that’s without the dressing.

All right, I’ll mix my own salad and add some of my favorite dressing – the only one I ever use – Italian. Wait, there is another nasty surprise:

A half-cup serving of Prego’s Heart Smart Traditional Italian Sauce had 430 milligrams of sodium, slightly less than what the USDA allows per serving in foods labeled “healthy.”

Processed foods are loaded with excessive amounts of sodium. Restaurant meals – are even worse!

“Restaurant foods are a huge source of sodium,” she says.[Consumer Reports Associate Health Editor Jamie Hirsh] “The amount of salt in some of these foods would just blow your mind. I saw a single entree offered by a national chain restaurant that had over 5,000 milligrams of sodium.

Is it really that big of a deal? How much salt is actually safe?

Government guidelines call for healthy adults to get no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day, which is the equivalent of about a teaspoon of table salt. People with high blood pressure, African-Americans, and middle-aged or older adults should get no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day.

But the average American eats much more than that, especially if they eat a lot of processed foods or if they eat out a lot, Hirsh says.

Honestly, I felt trapped. Well, there are a few guidelines you can follow to avoid extra sodium in our diet:

• Cook it yourself: you can control how much salt you add to your food. I found plenty “no sodium added” bean cans, tomato sauces, even spices (you have to be careful even with spices, e.g. my favorite “Lemon and Pepper” is loaded with salt, so I take an extra minute in the supermarket to find a mix that doesn’t contain any added sodium)
• Read the labels.
  

  When you purchase processed foods, compare products to find lower-sodium varieties. Some very similar products have very different sodium levels. For example, pure maple syrup has almost no sodium, but most commercial “pancake” syrups have a lot.

• Understand the claims.
  

  The federal government requires that products labeled “very low in sodium” have no more than 35 milligrams of sodium per serving, and “reduced sodium” products must have at least 25% less sodium per serving than the full-sodium version of the same food. A product labeled “healthy” can have no more than 480 milligrams of sodium per serving.

• Know the sodium heavyweights.
  

  Soy sauce has about 1,160 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon, and regular chicken bouillon has about 1,100 milligrams per packet, according to the report. Many frozen processed dinners are also loaded with sodium, as are cured meats, most cold cuts, and pickles and olives.

The benefits? Honestly, since we reduced the amount of sodium consumption in our house, we discovered, that food actually tastes better, not worse! Now we are enjoying the taste of the actual food, not the same salt.

“If you reduce the salt by even a modest amount, you will find that you are tasting the food more instead of the salt,” she says. “This is a very simple thing that would be beneficial to most people. High blood pressure is an important risk factor for heart failure and stroke, and reducing salt is an easy way for salt-sensitive people to lower their risk.”

Some of the tricks we’ve been using to add more flavor to the food, without reaching for the salt shaker:

• Garlic: if you add just a little garlic, or even rub the salad bowl with a garlic clove, it can greatly improve food taste without actually making everything taste and smell like one. Just a little goes a long way.
• Parsley, Dill, Cilantro: these flavorful and loaded with vitamins greens are essential for the great smell and taste of the food. I even started growing some in the pod on my windowsill. Honestly, buying in the supermarket a fresh bunch every week and storing it in a jar of water in a fridge – works better – in a pot it takes too long to grow some home-made parsley and produces too little.
• Other spices: Cumin, curry, chili, lemon and pepper (make sure the label states “no added sugar”), oregano, etc. The food taste is more diverse, sometimes even exotic – and we are enjoying it without any salt!

If you know other methods to improve the taste of the food and to avoid salt in your family’s diet – please share in the comments below!

Read more at WebMD: Salt Lurks in Unsuspected Foods:
Sure, Fast Food and Frozen Dinners Are Often High in Sodium, but Pancake Mix and Bagels, Too?