Add a Pinch of Salt

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea” - Isak Dinesen

Did you know that “consuming twice as much potassium as sodium might halve your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease”? According to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, excess sodium causes the body to retain fluids, which raises blood pressure. Potassium does the opposite; it blocks sodium and helps lower blood pressure. The study says you’ll get the ideal ratio for fluid balance by eating twice as much potassium as sodium. Americans typically consume more sodium than potassium and as a result “Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both women and men in the US”. Worldwide, coronary heart disease killed more than 7.6 million people in 2005. Thirty to fifteen times higher than the annual deaths by flu, 250,000 and 500,000 worldwide.

Sodium is packed into every processed food we eat as a preservative and taste enhancer. I’d love to use soup mixes or Asian noodle mixes at work for lunch but these usually contain 50% to 100% of the 2,300 milligrams daily limit recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Avoiding excess salt is difficult. Consider the list of saltiest restaurant dishes, 20 Foods Your Cardiologist Won't Eat, by Men’s Health Magazine.

• Chili's Boneless Buffalo Chicken Salad packs in 4,440 mg, nearly twice the daily limit and the equivalent of nearly 30 individual sized cans of Pringles Potato Chips.
• P.F. Chang's Hot and Sour Soup Bowl tops the list with 6,878 mg sodium, 534 calories. Imagine three days of salt in one bowl!
• The salt in prepared food is not always obvious; Red Lobster’s North Pacific King Crab Legs contain 3,570 mg sodium. Perhaps they cook the legs in highly salted water?

The prevalence of salt and chemicals in processed foods is one reason Michael Pollan wrote his book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" and his pithy summary:

"Eat [real] food. Not too much. Mostly from plants."

Perhaps the answer to eating too much salt is eating a banana? You’ll need to need a whole bunch! At 400 mg of potassium per banana, you’ll need 12 a day to reach the daily-recommended amount of potassium. More if you’re overdosing on salt. Other high potassium foods include

• potato (900 mg each)
• oat bran (500 mg/cup)
• tomatoes (500 mg/cup)
• spinach (950 mg/cup)
• raisins (600 mg/half cup)
• pears (300 mg each)
• cucumber (300 mg each)
• mangoes (300 mg each)
• orange juice (500 mg/ 8-ounce glass)

Put this all together by eating one of each item just listed from the banana to the orange juice and you’ll reach the recommended daily potassium level of 4700 mg.

Bottom Line

It takes careful food planning to avoid exceeding the daily sodium limit and to reach the daily potassium level. No wonder most people consume more sodium than potassium each day! One way to measure heart healthy foods is the “K factor”. K is the chemical symbol for potassium and the K factor is the ratio of potassium to salt within a food.

Common K Factors include:

• Soybeans = 340
• Fresh fish (not canned) = 3 to 5
• Milk = 2.8
• Corned beef hash = 0.37

An article in Whole Foods magazine mentions a book with more details, “The K Factor” by Dr. Richard D. Moore but it is out of print, has one Amazon review, and is selling for 1 penny used (not good indicators). Dr Moore has another book (1993) about the K Factor which is also out of print, “The high blood pressure solution: natural prevention and cure with the K factor”. It seems the idea of K Factor quickly faded and never became a diet fad.