CLEVELAND, OH -- You probably already know that foods high in fat, calories and cholesterol are bad for your health, but do you know the dangers of salt or sodium to your diet?
Some of your favorite restaurant foods are absolutely loaded with hidden salt, so much so that you could be putting your health at risk!
We all love to go out to eat when we can afford it, but perhaps we should be asking if our health can afford it. These popular chain restaurants are serving some dishes loaded with salt. What's the matter with salt? For one, too much of it can eventually kill you.
Steven Nissen is a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic. "Salt drives up blood pressure and blood pressure is one of the key components driving coronary heart disease."
The renowned Cleveland Clinic Cardiologist says that's the number one cause of death in this country.
So how much salt is too much? Most of us don't know but the American Heart Association recommends less than 2300 milligrams of sodium a day. That's one teaspoon of table salt for the whole day. But what worries Dr. Nissen and other health experts is the salt you can't see.
Dr. Nissen looked at the sodium content of one piece of Pizza Hut's large Meat Lover's Pan Pizza. Just two slices put you over the maximum for the whole day, but that's not the saltiest food out there.
Look at the grilled pork chops at Romano's Macaroni Grill. According to the restaurant's web site, that dish is packed with 4040 mg of sodium. If you eat nothing else all day, you're still taking in almost double the maximum suggested.
Sometimes it's not even the entree that's gets you. At Papa John's, 4 cheese sticks along with 2 cups of buffalo sauce are 2920 mg, according to the restaurant's web site.
At Chili's, the skillet queso with chips appetizer is a lot of food and a lot of sodium - 4770 mg.
The Quiznos turkey bacon guacamole sandwich is more than 3700 mg.
McDonald's premium southwest salad sounds like a pretty healthy choice, but it has almost a thousand (960) milligrams of sodium. Add the southwest dressing and it's 1300. Do the balsamic vinaigrette and it's almost 1700 (1690).
At Denny's, just a side of hash browns with onions and gravy is 3820mg.
If all this food is making you hungry and you're thinking "I don't have high blood pressure." You might consider this. Over time if you eat enough salt, your blood pressure will go up.
By age 65 in America, 50% of the population has high blood pressure.
Dr. Nissen would like to see legislation which requires restaurants to include sodium levels and other nutritional information on menus, because then at least you know what you're eating, but sodium levels are easily found on each of the restaurant's web sites, so if it's important to you, it's worth the time to do a little research on your own.
