To Salt or Not to Salt

The NY TImes ran an interesting article on salt consumption and the potential change in national dietary guidelines.  If I were to strictly adhere to our nutritional guidelines, I would need an additional two hours a day to read all the findings and figure out how and what I should be eating.

The salt thing throws me.  When I was growing up, my mother was notorious for limiting our salt usage.  I remember my sister salting everything and getting yelled at in the process.  I am a lover of salt, actually a lover of most seasonings.  When I lived Chicago, I did my own salt consumption study and not intentionally.

I was working constantly and my diet consisted of coffee, popcorn (with butter and salt) and ramen noodles.  Oh yes the ramen noodles were wonderful - cheap, easy to make and yummy.  You just knew they couldn't be good for you.  So after about a month of this diet (add the occasional cocktail and weekend pig out), I came face to face with my dietary demon.  In the middle of the night I woke up, dying of thirst, with a wicked headache and completely swollen.  I mean my hands looked liked sausages and my even my face was puffy.  I guzzled about a gallon of water and took 4 tylenol.  The next morning I wasn't doing that much better.  Filled myself with coffee and pushed on.

My mom's words about salt were ringing in my ear.  I checked out the ramen noodle package.  Holy cow, I might as well have just dumped the salt shaker into a bowl and spooned it into my mouth.  I quickly found that the less ramen noodles the less midnight puffies.  I found my high water mark for salt intake.

I still love ramen noodles and indulge on occasion, but I am a believer that there is a limit on how much salt is too much. Not that we should ignore the national guidelines, but we really need to see what works for us.  Its not really that hard to do.  You know when enough is enough.  The difficulty is not in knowing, its in limiting.