For people who are overweight or have high blood pressure, Mayo Clinic researchers offer the following health quiz on salt content in common foods.
To participate, answer: Which of the following items has more sodium?- Sparkling bottled water or club soda?
- Deli turkey or ham?
- Reduced sodium soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce?
- Instant or quick-cooking oatmeal?
- Frozen corn in butter sauce or canned corn?
Now, the answers: Sparkling bottled waters are clearly the better choice - most contain less than 3 milligrams of sodium. In contrast, club soda has 75 mg in 12 ounces.
Both deli-variety turkey and ham have more than 300 milligrams of sodium an ounce. Fresh turkey has only 20 mg of sodium per ounce. It's the preservatives they put in deli meats that kick up the salt count.
Soy sauce - even the reduced-sodium kind - still packs a walloping 600 mg of sodium per tablespoon. Worcestershire has 234 mg of sodium for the same size serving.
Instant oatmeal has 286 milligrams of sodium per single serving packet, compared to 1 milligram for two-thirds of a cup of quick cooked oats. They both take the same amount of time to cook; just don't add salt to your portion.
Frozen corn in butter has more sodium than does canned corn - 310 mg to 286 mg for a half-cup serving. To save on sodium, choose fresh vegetables or those packaged without seasonings and sauces.
For anyone trying to stay below the 2,400-mg-a-day maximum sodium intake recommended by medical guidelines, the common-sense rule is: Just don't add it.
Better yet, say the doctors, cut out all processed foods, because that's where the big sodium doses are.