another sodium culprit

Eek!  I'm now looking on all items I buy to see how much sodium is in it - yes, I'm becoming a bit of a geek when it comes to stuff like this...I acknowledge it, I confess it...

But guess what I just found out???  For each teaspoon - teaspoon, that is! - of chicken broth, guess how much sodium is in a teaspoon?  510 mg in ONE teaspoon!

So I just bought this lovely lentil-bean-wild rice-quinoa bean mix - the kind that you pop the whole shebang into a pot, add meat if you want and a few veggies and voila you have supper for a week!  I think I mentioned this in my last blog.  So I was chatting with the vendor and she was telling me proudly that there was no sodium in these mixes - and I said excitedly - "I'm so glad to hear that! That's just great!" (yes, that's how geeky I am :) ).  And then I went home and promptly put 5 grams of sodium (10 tsp) of sodium into the pot with about 15 cups of liquid - I think that does my sodium diet for the month!  I'll be living salad if you come visit :)  well, maybe not. I love my grains and peanut butter - and newly discovered peanut butter chocolate ice cream - a little too much.

It comes in various forms - note, this is not just salt - what I discovered was in the chicken broth is as follows...
1. salt (sodium chloride)
2. monosodium glutamate (MSG)
3. disodium guanylate
4. disodium inosinate

All together makes for a whopping 510 mg per single teaspoon.  I may never buy chicken broth again (well, before I say that I'll look at how much sodium is in the 'low sodium' version...and my food will become more and more bland...hopefully not!

I also discovered that cheese is another silent and seductive offender... check it out for yourself.

Ok, done being geeky.

I'll go back to what I was doing before this detour - I'm taking an online course that is a requirement for residency training here. It's entitled Indigenous Cultural Competency, and focuses on our cultural competency in our interactions with our Aboriginal patients.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to take this course, and am learning a great deal about the Aboriginal peoples among whom I live.

PS. You can probably figure out simply by the number of blog posts you see in a given week or month how much spare time I have - I have spare time this weekend as I have the holiday Monday off!  Hence, 2 posts in 1 week!