The following information is not to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m already worrying about feeding my baby too much sugar and setting off nut allergies; now, I’ve got another nutritional worry: My baby is likely getting too much salt in her diet.
In the United Kingdom, approximately 70 percent of 8-month-old babies get more than healthy levels of sodium, and researchers say the U.S. diet has a similar trend.
Though salt is necessary in small amounts, most kids are getting more than twice the maximum safe amount. Why is this bad? What are the risks? And where is it all coming from? The answers to these questions are seriously pissing me off!
What's most frustrating to me is the fact that ordinary, seemingly "non-salty" foods tend to contain an exorbitant amount of sodium. For example, when I started feeding solids to Penelope, my older daughter, my pediatrician surprised me by recommending that I get alternate “O” cereals -- the Trader Joe’s house brand was what we settled on -- because Cheerios have loads of sodium. "I can always tell when a baby’s getting too much sodium," he told me. "They get kinda bloated."
Well, who can tell the difference? My babies are chubby as all get-out! (He says it’s a "different chubby," but my eyes don’t see it -- yet.)
In these kinds of massive amounts, sodium can have long-term health effects that’ll make you cry 96 tears. According to Ashley Koff, dietitian and co-author of Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged, the risks include dehydration, constipation, and a taste for salt that will make it harder for them to cut it out later.
So how much is too much? In the UK, the maximum recommended allowance is 400 mg per day, or about an eighth of a teaspoon. The US doesn’t have a maximum recommendation, but according to Koff, “We do have an 'adequate intake' to show how small the need is." From 0-6 months, she says, 120 mg is all a kid needs. From 7-12 months, up to 1 gram of salt (or 1/4 teaspoon) is okay, but only if the kid is very active and sweating a lot.
I know we’re not adding salt to our kids’ foods, but every kid I know gets Cheerios. I’ve been more aware of salt since I had pre-eclampsia, and I’m more at risk for hypertension, and I’m amazed at the weird places I find it. In fact, I noticed that plain canned tomato sauce came in a low-salt variety. Which means the regular kind has salt. Crap! And forget the handy-dandy mac and cheese I split between the girls for lunch a couple times a week -- even though I get the organic kind, it’s still got more salt than is healthy.
The more I see low-sodium versions of foods, the more I realize that the regular versions have far more salt than my family and I need. And I'm telling you, I don't taste the difference. (Well, except that now that I've reduced salt when cooking at home, everything tastes over-salted when I eat out!)
Koff offers these further suggestions for adjusting your kids' sodium intake:
Kids don’t need any added salt ... Foods like celery, tuna fish, olives, and some cheeses have all the naturally-occurring sodium they’ll need. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t be serving them any processed foods and you certainly shouldn’t be adding table salt to anything you feed them.
No processed foods? Ha ha ha, she's a funny one. Still, it's good advice to follow.
Do you watch your baby’s salt intake?
This Hot Dad Wants to Do Your Ironing
This Hot Dad Wants to Cook You Dinner
This Hot Dad Cooks AND Does the Dishes
Kanye West is Gay?! 
Comments 10
Good reminder. I cook from scratch - so it is rare for them to have processed food. However, I buy regular canned tomatoes if the low salt variety isn't available.
Coffe.crisp - my sentiments exactly. Everything is bad. Everywhere you look.....death is lurking. Gets tiresome trying to keep up with all the deadly things that had managed not to decimate humanity before now.
I actually TRIED to monitor how much sodium my daughter was taking in around the 1yr mark because I noticed how much sodium is in the prepackaged toddler food. The little meals that have pasta and a side by gerber are loaded. So I asked my pedi how much is too much, and He didnt even know the answer!!!!!!!! I tried to search it on google and came up with conflicting data also, so I just tried my best to make sure to avoid it for her. I have a "salty palate", love salty foods and add salt to a lot of foods for myself because thats what I had as a kid. When my blood pressure was through the roof while pregnant I learned to regulate it a little better and kept me checking those packages until it became second nature. I was completly thrown off that a peditritian did not even know how much sodium is healthy for a little one.....
I'm always glad I've taken more charge of our diets. The less premade things you buy, the less you're ever shocked by what's in them. It's amazing how much food has changed over the years as well -- sometimes for the better, sometimes not! Baby foods, the jarred kind, often have WAY more sodium than a baby needs. It's really kind of shocking!
Avoiding processed foods is the first and most important step toward avoiding excess sodium, for you and your baby. And your taste for anything, salt, sugar, fat, etc, can be easily trained in either direction.
Take two minutes to listen to this very experienced doctor about taking that grain of salt in the context of a healthy diet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVtOzOROUqE&feature=player_embedded
I cant tell when a child/baby/ toddler has a high sodium intake, their skin and eyes look disgustingly yellow and they they usually have dark circles and sunken eyes. I dont care if people have survived eating like crap, I will not allow my son's body become trash. Yeah you all survived on processed foods and what not but the thruth is your probably obese or your health generaly sucks and your skin looks like shit. I try my very best to stay away from processed foods.
Good for you Tortoise, I'll get right on making you a perfect mommy medal out of gold and silver and I'll hang it around your neck with a ribbon made of angel hair and unicorn tails.
I avoid processed foods and don't add salt to my kids' food, but there's no sense in being an asshole about it. Now that you know, you can keep an eye on it. If you grab a gerber 2nd foods to stick ion your bag for an outing and give your child good food most of the time, then you dont' have to worry. The occasional high sodium food isn't going to hurt anyone.