Most people are beginning to prepare their Thanksgiving menus; the body is starting to salivate just thinking about the delicious food ahead. Unfortunately the average Thanksgiving meal contains a load of sodium. Not only is salt added to many of the common dishes, it also comes pre-added to most of the mainstream brands of turkeys. "They’re just adding weight. After all, who in their right mind would want to pay extra for salt water and wind up with far less meat than they bargained for? If your store-bought turkey is labeled “enhanced” or “flavor enhanced” or “self-basting” or “basted,” it has been injected with a salt water solution during the packaging process. Often, this solution contains nasty additives like vegetable oils and emulsifiers.
While U.S. law does require that these “enhanced” meats be labeled, the labels are often inconspicuous and hard to find. The USDA has recently proposed new rules that require these labels to be more prominent and explicit, but as of yet this is not the law of the land. As it stands, the labeling may be hidden near the Nutrition Facts or ingredient labels, may be small enough to hide in plain sight, and may not fully list the ingredients in the brining solution.
In other words, you could be buying a certified organic, all-natural turkey at Whole Foods, and it could be up to 40% solution and only 60% turkey!"
An article from Channel 5 News talks about the hidden sources of sodium in our Thanksgiving meal:
"No need for a salt shaker on the Thanksgiving table: Unless you really cooked from scratch, there's lots of sodium already hidden in the menu.
Stealth sodium can do a number on your blood pressure. Americans eat way too much salt, and most of it comes inside common processed foods and restaurant meals.
The traditional Thanksgiving fixings show how easy sodium can sneak into the foods you'd least expect. Yes, raw turkey is naturally low in sodium. But sometimes a turkey or turkey breast is injected with salt water to plump it, adding a hefty dose of sodium before it even reaches the store -- something you'd have to read the fine print to discover.
From the stuffing mix to the green bean casserole to even pumpkin pie, a lot of people can reach their daily sodium allotment or more in that one big meal unless the cook employs some tricks.
"For Thanksgiving or any meal, the more you can cook from scratch and have some control over the sodium that's going in, the better," says the American Dietetic Association's Bethany Thayer, a registered dietitian at the Henry Ford Health Health System in Detroit.
The Food and Drug Administration this month opened deliberations on how to cut enough salt in processed foods for average shoppers to have a good shot at meeting new dietary guidelines. The idea: If sodium levels gradually drop in the overall food supply, it will ease the nation's epidemic of high blood pressure -- and our salt-riddled taste buds will have time to adjust to the new flavor.
"Reducing sodium is important for nearly everyone," Dr. Robin Ikeda of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the FDA hearing.
The question is how to make that happen. The prestigious Institute of Medicine and several public health advocates are urging the FDA to order gradual rollbacks, setting different sodium levels for different kinds of foods, a step the government has been reluctant to take.
Food makers want a voluntary approach and say they're reworking their recipes, some as part of a campaign launched by New York City to cut salt consumption by at least 20 percent over five years.
It will take different strategies to remove salt from different foods -- and some may need to be a sneak operation, Kraft Foods Vice President Richard Black told the FDA meeting. Ritz crackers labeled low-sodium were a bust until the box was changed to say "Hint of Salt" and those exact same crackers started selling, he said.
In other foods, salt acts as a preservative with a variety of functions. Kraft sells cheese with somewhat less sodium in Britain than in the U.S. Americans melt a lot of cheese and lower-sodium cheese doesn't melt as well, Black said.
In the U.S., the average person consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day. The nation's new dietary guidelines say no one should eat more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium -- about what's in a teaspoon of salt -- and half the population should eat even less, just 1,500 milligrams. The smaller limit is for anyone who's in their 50s or older, African-Americans of any age, and anyone suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease.
Why? One in three U.S. adults has high blood pressure, a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. Being overweight and inactive raises blood pressure, too, but the weight of scientific evidence shows sodium is a big culprit.
People want to eat heart-healthy, but Wal-mart shoppers spend about 19 minutes buying groceries, added Tres Bailey of Wal-mart Stores Inc., which told its vendors to start cutting sodium.
That's not a lot of time for label-reading to find hidden sodium, especially in foods where it's unexpected -- like salad dressings that can harbor more than 130 milligrams per tablespoon.
Depending on your choices, Thanksgiving dinner alone can pass 2,000 milligrams: About 600 per serving from stuffing mix, another 270 from gravy. The salt water-added turkey can bring another 320, double that if you saved time and bought it fully-cooked. Use canned beans in the green bean casserole and add another 350. A small dinner roll adds 130. A piece of pumpkin pie could bring as much as 350."
So what can you do to avoid all the extra salt this holiday season? Buy meat from farms you know and trust. Make sure that the labels do not make the claims, "enhanced," "flavor enhanced," or "self-basting." Use sea salt to flavor instead of the usual table salt. Or why not bast your turkey yourself? Click here for a tutorial on how to brine your own turkey.
Pura Vida!
Alica Ryan, NTP
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