When we came back in 1974 from six years of living in Europe, we were struck by how salty much of American food was. Thirty-six years later, we still think most American food is too salty.
We bought some roast turkey from a deli for tonight's supper. My wife decided not to eat it because it was too salty; she opted for her own brown rice and black bean concoction instead. So I'll have her turkey tomorrow and she'll have my brown rice and black beans.
She is fussy about where we have pizza; a couple of pizzerias are off her list because their pizzas are too salty.
One day a week I used to have a three-egg omelet, home-made muffins, plus breakfast sausage from the local supermarket. Then the sausage seemed a lot saltier. I mentioned it to the meat cutters, but the salt content seemed to stay the same. Now I just have the omelet and muffins. I put no salt on the omelet and my wife says that she makes the muffins 24 at a time with a half teaspoon of salt for the batch.
For several years I've said that excess salt belongs in two places - on the rim of a margarita glass and on pretzels. I can't even remember the last margarita I had, but I like to have some pretzels with wine before dinner. Also olives.
A couple of weeks ago I had one leg swell up to a third larger than the other. I didn't hurt much but it was an anomaly. My wife called the nurse online who recommended I go into urgent care the next day, a Saturday. In the morning the swelling had subsided and I decided to just watch it. The following week it swelled up again, and I called for an appointment with my regular doctor. By the time I saw him the swelling had gone down again.
I thought it might be excessive salt and mentioned it to him. I said I had the wine, pretzels, and olives most nights. He couldn't find anything abnormal, but recommended that I get an ultrasound. He also said watch the salt.
The ultrasound was negative. Total charge: $690!
I started thinking about my activity or lack thereof. I have been very involved in family history research and just get carried away sitting in front of the computer looking at record after record, finding new stuff or confirming old stuff. Maybe I'm just cutting off my circulation. I also have the chair rather high because my computer is on a rather high table. I've lowered the chair and try to get up more frequently. The swelling has not come back in a big way.
I also decided to check my salt intake. For the most part, we eat very few processed foods. I won't bore you with a list of the salt content of various foods that I do eat, but for what I could find of sodium content for the foods I do eat, my intake was 96% of the daily value.
The sodium percentages were surprising. For olives and pretzels, no. But 1/2 cup of low-fat yoghurt was 3%; a few "baby" carrots, 3%. The big surprise was a 2-1/2 inch slice of French bread was 14%!!!
If I eat French bread, I often have two servings, 28% of the daily value for sodium. But I don't eat French bread very often, and so that gets me down to 82% of the daily value of sodium. And my doctor wants me to watch my salt?!?
Joan D. Vinge wrote a series of science fiction novels starting with "The Winter Queen". A persistent theme in some of the later values is when a distant super computer is asked for information, it responds with, "Ask the right question."
And that theme is something for a different blog entry.
