Most salt in our food: from bread, not chips
Like many Americans, here in San Francisco most people would imagine that the most salt in their food comes from chips. Or pretzels or even popcorn.
But that would be wrong.
Top news coming in to San Francisco today is about health. It turns out bread and bagels give us more salt than chips do.
As the news source, newser.com says, according to the Centers for Disease Control, bread and bagels "account for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food—about 7% of the salt that the average American eats in a day."
We should only eat about 2,300 milligrams sodium in a day, but we tend to eat around 3,300 milligams, says newser.com.
Each piece of bread or each bagel in itself is not so bad, it's because we eat so many of them that they add up, and that's where the harm lies.
CDC officials themselves, according to the AP, were surprised by their own findings.
After chips, the other items in our diets, in order of highest salt content, are:
2. cold cuts and cured meats
3. pizza
4. fresh and processed poultry
5. soups
6. fast-food hamburgers and sandwiches
7. cheese
8. spaghetti and other pasta dishes
9. meatloaf and other meat dishes
10. snacks like potato chips and pretzels
(These top 10 items make up around 44% of our daily diet.)
But just because chips don't rank so badly on this list, doesn't mean you are at liberty to eat as many as you like. Chips are full of empty calories and are loaded with fat, so it's a good idea to cut down, or even eliminate them altogether, especially if you are trying to lose weight.
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See the commercial in the video on the left-hand side. Though we might wish Doritos were healthier, we can still enjoy their Super Bowl advert.
Sources: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Explain_why_eating_a_lot_of_chips_is_bad_for_you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt
http://www.newser.com/story/139253/no-1-source-of-salt-in-our-diet-isnt-chips-its-bread.html
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