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by btilly 2868 days ago
I am well aware of this because I have a hormone problem causing me to retain salt. So it isn't theoretical for me - I have to be extremely anal about it or else blood pressure medicine won't do me any good.

However what it boils down to in practice is that I've learned to not even ask whether you have a low-sodium menu. Because you probably don't, and even if you do, your idea of low-sodium is still way too much for what my body can take.

My solution is to only eat food prepared from scratch, or eat at specific restaurants where I can choose the exact ingredients that went into my meal. There is no point in restaurants trying to cater to people like me, because if they did I'd have no way to hear about it.

I'm serious about that. Advertising won't work because I've learned that advertising is misleading. "Reduced salt" means 25% less than a comparable product, which had several times what I could accept. Offering "healthy salads" won't sway me because I've learned the hard way that their salt content is usually just as high in practice as a burger and fries.

There are only two phrases that I respond to. "No salt added" and "Raw ingredients." If you're less restrictive than that, you're probably consuming too much salt. Even though you think that you're being good. So much so that if a normal person tries to eat what I eat, their first thought is going to be that the food tastes awful and needs more salt.

Incidentally for the record, our recommended daily allowance is 1500 mg, which is around 1/4 tsp of salt. Most adults in the USA eat more than double that. If you eat out every other day, you almost certainly are getting a lot more than most adults.