FDA recommends no more than 2300 mg of Sodium per day. It will reduce to 1600mg if you have high blood pressure. Therefore, watching your salt intake is super important. We will recognize if a food is lack of salt very easily. Similarly, no one like food that is too salty to eat. Here comes a shocking fact. Just because you are not able to taste salt in a food doesn’t mean the food is low in sodium level. Do you know most of us chomp through around 3300 mg of sodium per day? To make matters worse, we even get our daily requirement of sodium, and more, over the course of a single meal !!!  If you are a physically active, there is no much to worry as you will lose a fair amount of sodium through your sweat. If not, it’s no time before you are going to contract some health condition.

Many foods you are not expecting are really loaded with salt. Read on for 10 sneaky sources of salt you overlook.

1. Sauces:

We use sauces to our foods to enhance its flavor. Of course, some meals just don’t seem right without them. There is no wrong in thinking to add some soya sauce to your rice to savor it.  Do you know a tablespoon of soy sauce has up to 1,228 mg of sodium?! That means half of your daily requirement is satisfied, then and there. Similarly, a two-tablespoon serving of a salad dressing or a barbecue sauce is loaded with around 300 mg of sodium.

2. Cereal:

Many items sold on the shelf contain sodium to increase their shelf life. Cereal can not only be a healthy way to start your day but a salty way too. Surprised? One serving of cereals may have 180 to 300 mg of sodium. That is around 12 % of your daily required sodium. 

3. Cottage cheese:

Cottage cheese is a great source of calcium and protein. No wonder it is considered as the healthiest snack. Moreover, opting for low-fat cottage cheese offers 28grams of protein for just 160 calories. Seems a good catch, right? Here comes the real catch, a half cup of cottage cheese contains around 400 mg of sodium.  That means a one-cup serving provides about 40% of what you’re supposed to have in an entire day.

4. Processed cheese:

Two tablespoons of processed cheese contain 597 mg of sodium. Therefore, be careful about savoring too much-processed cheese.

5. Soup:

We agree that the soup makes you feel full and is a healthy option as it is low in calorie and highly nutritious. However, instead of homemade soup, if you are having canned or restaurant soup, beware. You are consuming nearly half of your daily recommended sodium in one bowl itself.

6. Bread:

As a healthy option, most of us depend on whole wheat bread and the whole grains from which the bread is made is naturally low in salt. We agree. However, a significant quantity of salt is added at different stages of the processes to enhance the flavor. Therefore, a single slice of bread can have around 100 to 170 milligrams of sodium. In other words, you will get almost 7% of your daily requirement of sodium from a single slice of bread.

7. Reduced sodium foods:

“Reduced sodium” on a food label implies, it has only 25% less sodium than the original product. Therefore, “reduced sodium” version of a food product will have 750 mg of sodium if its original version has 100 mg. This 750 mg is also significantly higher for people who need to reduce the sodium intake. Therefore, it is not reduced sodium, but “low sodium” or “very lows sodium” label you should look for.

8. Hot chocolate:

Who doesn’t love hot chocolate? Well, each cup of your favorite drink could have 16 times the recommended salt intake. The result of several studies shows that when it comes to reduced intake of sodium, each serving of chocolate powder is as bad as eating a bag of crisps.