Dick and I are always mindful of the food we order when we’re out. We do our best to choose the healthiest items on the menu. Even so, after returning home, we both were extremely thirsty and downed a large glass of water. Seems the food was loaded with salt.

Salt is a Vital Nutrient
We need it to live; yet Americans are getting too much salt in their diets. In 1974, men daily consumed 2,780 milligrams of salt, women 1,774. By 2006 salt intake jumped to 4,300 milligrams for men and 3,003 for women.

Samuel & Matthew can’t believe there’s so much to know about salt.

The body needs sodium to function. Excessive sodium intake leads to high blood pressure, which is associated with strokes, kidney damage and congestive heart failure. The National Academy of Sciences estimated that reducing sodium intake could prevent 100,000 deaths a year!

Not Salt All Equal
The standard table salt you buy in the grocery store has been chemically-cleansed. Refined salt has been bleached to look white and treated so it will pour easily. This is also the salt that has been added to all processed foods.

On the other hand, unrefined sea salt from a whole foods store is rich in minerals. It’s naturally complex of sodium chloride, which includes minerals such as calcium and magnesium as well as trace minerals. In the natural form, the body properly utilizes the salt and the minerals help to protect the body from toxins, parasites, bacteria, viruses, and other illnesses. There are over one hundred minerals in unrefined sea salt helping to keep the body in balance.

Shaking the Processed Food Habit
Our excessive salt intake isn’t coming from our salt shakers. Most of it, 77 percent, is from processed foods or food purchased out. Some products are offering lower sodium content. Of course, this is still chemically processed salt. You can find nutritional information for many restaurants (including fast food) online. Not many will take the time to look at nutritional information online before going to a restaurant.

Sixteen food manufacturing companies have committed to join the National Salt Reduction Initiative, (NSRI) a campaign started by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reduce salt content in restaurants and packaged foods in the United States by 20 percent over five years. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration is working on front of the package nutritional labeling. Although, front of the package labeling will only alert consumers to the salt content.

We don’t need to wait five years for food manufactures to reduce sodium. We don’t need front of the package labeling about salt either. When you use natural sea salt at home, will you reduce sodium in your diet and you’ll receive he benefits from the minerals in the salt. When we cook from scratch and eat at home we’ll be healthy.

Three Tips for Salt Usage

1. Use Sea Salt

2. Add salt at the end of the cooking process, as it’ll lose its saltiness.

3. Add less salt when cooking, as most people want to salt the food on their plates. (Some even add salt before tasting it.)

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Do you know what percentage of food dollars is spent on processed foods, most, if not all, which have added chemicals to enhance flavor?

Kids are conditioned to these psychedelic flavors. The additives like food flavorings,  high fructose corn syrup, MSG and salt are almost always ingredients in processed foods, especially junk foods. Salt is added to processed foods for longer shelf life as well as taste.

Zachary and Angel love psychedelic colors… not chemical- altered flavors.

MSG is added to food to give it that indescribable taste-explosion that’s found in fast food. These additives become additive. That’s why MSG is found just about everything, including French fries. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find MSG on a food label as it has many aliases.

What about those yummy fruit flavors? Today, chemicals can give candy and gum a strawberry or an apple flavor, but it’s really petroleum. Do you really want your kids to eat petroleum?

Add sugar, especially High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to the mix and it’s very hard for whole foods to compete with the psychedelic flavors. HFCS fools the brain. It interrupts the signal that your stomach has received enough, so you over eat. Once HFCS is no longer in your diet, you will find that you’re satiated with less food.

Your child’s body craves real food, even if you have a picky eater. Yes, even picky eaters, who refuse to eat whole foods, need them for health. To be successful in transforming a picky eater to a healthy eater, whole foods must replace fast foods and junk foods. ( Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater onto a Healthy Eater explains how you can accomplish this in about a week.) You’ll be fighting an uphill battle if cookies, crackers, chips, candy and sugar-filled drinks are found in your pantry and you regularly purchase fast foods.

Psychedelic flavors alter our perception of food. It changes our sensory expectation of what is tasty. Because of marketing highly processed foods, kids expect a taste-sensation when they eat.

Adjust Your Taste Thermostat
It will take a week or so for your kid’s taste buds to adjust to whole foods. Be assured, they will adjust. Yes, you need to be patient and hold the line.

Your thermostat adjusts your furnace or air conditioner when you change the temperature control. Once the new temperature is programmed in the thermostat the temperature in the room eventually alters.

The same is true for taste buds. Once they’re programmed to whole foods, the sweetness of an orange or a ripe peach will be unbelievable. A sip of soda pop will become excruciatingly sugary. The craving for salty chips will be replaced with desiring the crunch of julienne veggies and dip. Canned soups will become too salty. Boxed macaroni and cheese will loose its appeal. (By the way, the processed dried cheese in mac and cheese is loaded with colorings and MSG.)

Do your children have psychedelic taste expectations? We spend 90 percent of our food dollars on processed foods. Not until you change that statistic for your family will your children begin to appreciate the taste of whole foods.

CLICK HERE for ordering information for Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater into a Healthy Eater and The Forest Feast: Baby Bites Mealtime Adventures.

For info about the free Baby Bites Ezine, CLICK HERE.

Yes, it’s true your salary has a lot to do with tasty food…The word salary comes from salt! Isn’t that hysterical?

It turns out that salt is not only our oldest preservative but commodity, as well. Salt was extremely rare in the past. So rare, that it was often used as pay. That’s right, salt used to be a method of pay for a hard day’s work. Can you imagine earning a couple of tablespoons of salt for a hard-day’s work? I can’t, after all salt is common today and cheap!

Gabi and Luke-Xavier say “Phooey” to too much salt! 
Click here for their mommy’s website: “Mommy of Many.”

Restaurants have salt sitting on tables and processed foods are loaded with salt. It’s easy to consume too much. I guess it’s a good thing we’re no longer paid in salt!

Americans eat too much salt, because it’s found in all processed foods. You can accomplish a lot by becoming conscious of added sodium in the foods you purchase. The way to adequately cut salt consumption is easy: cook at home using whole foods. Then, when you use salt, use a natural salt which hasn’t been bleached or heated. In fact, natural salt has trace amounts of vital nutrients: calcium, potassium, sulfur, magnesium, iron, iodine, manganese, copper, and zinc.

Sea salt contains about 80 mineral elements that the body needs. Some of these elements are needed in trace amounts. Unrefined sea salt is a better choice of salt than other types of salt on the market. Ordinary table salt which is found in super markets has been stripped of its companion elements and contains additive elements such as aluminum silicate to keep it powdery and porous. Aluminum is a very toxic element in our nervous system.

Like all acquired tastes, you can alter your taste for salt. Just as sugar consumption can dull a child’s taste buds, too many salty foods can impair your child’s discovery of wholesome foods. Begin to lower your family’s salt intake and, before you know it, some foods you once regularly consumed will taste too salty!

Salt is a vital nutrient, but eating too much salt may contribute to high blood pressure. Americans consume about one-and-a-half teaspoons of salt a day, although only 15 percent of our salt intake comes from the salt shaker. In 2004, the FDA attempted to lower its recommendation of one teaspoon of salt a day to two-thirds of a teaspoon.

However, because of lobbying from the salt industry and the prevalence of salt as an agent in preserving packaged foods, the FDA kept its recommendation at one teaspoon a day. Babies should consume less salt than adults, because their kidneys can’t cope with larger amounts.

Salt is extremely hard for most people to reduce in their diets, because it’s a fundamental ingredient of packaged and restaurant foods. Salt increases the shelf life of packaged foods (bread, crackers and cookies, processed lunch meats, and canned foods), while it depresses bitterness and enhances sweetness.

For convenience, many of the recipes found in my book and on this website call for processed food items in cans, which are usually high in sodium. Today in every grocery store, products are available with less added sodium. Look for these as they are a better nutritional choice.

Most grocery chains carry organic chicken broth, which has at least one-third less sodium and is fat free. Organic chicken broth is made with free-range chickens. For the most healthful broth, purchase a brand stating not only organic, but one that’s free from Canola, soy, and cottonseed oils, as well as added sugars. I stock up on these products when they go on sale.

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