The bottom line is that so long as the “unwashed masses” continue to buy soup and other grocery products with high salt … so long as they reward restaurants that use salt instead of actual flavor, thing will continue to get worse.

Perhaps an uprising (on the order of the recent, yet only moderately effective negative spin on HFCS)  would help, but I don’t see it coming.

I do not either but it needs to happen.[:0]

  The lowest stock that I can buy without going to a specialty store is Swanson’s low salt with is 570mg/cup.

Kitchen Basics brand vegetable stock has 330 mg of sodium per cup. We use it as a soup base when we don’t have time to make our own stock. I think it has a nice rich taste. You can buy it at any store, it comes in a box.

I think it’s the way restaurants make their soup – they probably use a commercial chicken or beef base that can literally make gallons of stock, but very salty.

Scorereader, in the last month I’ve had to cut back on salt, and it makes me wonder too, seems like when I eat out, most dishes that I eat seem overly salty.

Kland01s:  Kitchen Basics real stocks rule!  I don’t make my own stock, and I don’t care for broth, so I buy Kitchen Basics.  Can’t do without it.  Anything I make, they have a stock for it.  Super-high quality, and they make some salt-free versions, too.

The bottom line is that so long as the “unwashed masses” continue to buy soup and other grocery products with high salt … so long as they reward restaurants that use salt instead of actual flavor, thing will continue to get worse.
 
Perhaps an uprising (on the order of the recent, yet only moderately effective negative spin on HFCS)  would help, but I don’t see it coming.

Yes, I think restaurants load up on the salt, MSG and olive oil.

My blood pressure which I just took less than 15 minutes ago is 93/65 so I guess I personally have no reason to be concerned.

Shut the front door! What an awesome blood pressure. My doctor would be so proud! Dare to dream…

Davydd, thank you for the explanation & examples.

It is really simple. Salt causes fluid retainage which contributes to higher blood pressure. I check and record my weight daily as well as track calories and daily exercise accurately. If I eat a restaurant meal, even if my caloric intake says I don’t exceed daily needs, my weight will increase the next morning. It has increased even after a 12 mile Nordic walk the day before when supposedly I ate 500 calories less than maintenance. It has increased as much as three pounds. That is because restaurants over salt all foods.

At home we have no salt shaker. I salt nothing. Foodbme is right in that using less salt you accentuate the salt you do taste. I can taste the natural salt in foods now.

If you read labels in grocery stores looking for low salt you will start to see a pattern by the food processors. The holy grail of making food taste better is salt, fat and sugar. So if a product is touted as low salt you can bet it will have a higher fat and sugar content over the regular product. Vice versa, reduced fat products tend to have a higher salt content. It can get frustrating if on a low salt, low fat diet and desire not to waste calories on empty sugar calories. That’s one reason I attempt to eliminate processed foods in my diet and eat real foods as much as possible–foods that come with no packaging label.

Amen!

  Dawn T., I like your approach to this thread. I also make my own stock from beef bones for onion soup and demi glace. Reducing a stock by 2/3 or more certainly intensifies what ever salt content was originally in so I don’t use any salt in stocks.

  However, at the restaurant, I do use a paste like product that has 1200 mg of sodium per serving. I use less of this if I am making a gravy because the roux that we make uses salted butter. I don’t think that anyone else at work tastes their results because when I get there at 3:00 pm, all of the gravies and au jus, are overly salted. I will correct them before I allow the cooks to serve then. All most all of our soups are house made so that we can keep control of the sodium content in check as most of our summer trade is with older tourists who like most of us are on some what of a restricted diet.

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have my own problem with HBP. On my last two doctor visits for my annual, he has mentioned my HBP. He cited fat, salt, carbs, and stress as factors. “Drink more water,” he says. Hell, I drink at least 8 glasses a day when I work on the line. (6 days per week)

  So, tomorrow, I will be “gone fishing”, on the orders of my physician to lower my blood pressure. Two birds with one stone, so to speak as omega 3 fatty acids and the relaxation will help!

  David O.

Dawn, Pacific Organic Low Sodium is the lowest sodium broth I have found. It’s something like 70mg per cup. They sell it at my local grocery store & I stock up when it’s on sale.

Many restaurants use a soup base that’s either in a thick paste form or powdered for their soups. For example, the chicken base that I use is 810mg/teaspoon which makes a very weak cup usually requires double and still doesn’t approach the taste that you would get from a canned stock like Swanson’s.
 
At home, I have no choice but to make stock from scratch to keep the salt down. The lowest stock that I can buy without going to a specialty store is Swanson’s low salt with is 570mg/cup. I save all the carrot scrapings,celery ends and leaves, onion tops and bottoms that I’d normally throw out in the trash and keep them in a big zip lock bag. I’ll buy two packages of chicken backs and cut them each up with a cleaver into 4 pieces, throw in the bag of vegetable trash, quarter a large onion, fresh parsely, and then season with peppercorns and bay leaf in a 10Q pressure cooker. I use a fat seperator to remove the fat.

I freeze this up in 2Q containers until I need it. Only way I can make soup or anything else for my dad that requires chicken stock. It’s darned near impossible to keep his sodium level down even trying to cook from scratch when a slice of packaged rye bread has 220 mg salt. Even if you bought only store brand products that are labeled low or no salt added, you can’t keep the numbers below 1500 eating like a bird. 

I’m oblivious to Salt.  Lately 99% of my meals, I  prepare at home so I’m assuming that my daily salt intake is at 2400 milgrams or less considering I’ve been consistently loosing weight over the last few months. On the rare occasion I eat out I’m really not concerned about how much salt I take in. My blood pressure which I just took less than 15 minutes ago is 93/65 so I guess I personally have no reason to be concerned.

 Again, in my opinion, sodium isn’t the big issue, I think the amount of carbohydrates (even the daily recommended allowance by the FDA) is above and beyond outrageous.

For example, even in roadfood terms, some of the date shakes I had out in California and the sweet tea I’ve had down south are just way, overly too sickenly sweet to even consider remotely enjoyable.

If I ate the amount of pathetically over beyond sugary hostess pies and sodas that some people do, I would already be in a pine box and I’m not even diabetic!

My experience has been that when you eat in a restaurant, the food tends to contain more salt than home cooked food. I think most restaurant cooks use more rather than less salt to enhance the flavor of their food.
Also, I find that if you have consciously cut back on your salt intake for a period of time when you do get something that has been salted above your accustomed intake level, the taste is accentuated. 

So true..

I know that I don’t usually analyze WHY a food is tasty, I just notice that it is. This is really noticeable if I heat a can of Campbell’s Chicken with Noodles LOW SODIUM soup for a sickly relative. This soup is ready to serve and only contains 140 mg of sodium per serving. It is also hard to find and very expensive. It would take a long time for me to come to like the taste of this soup, due to its low sodium content.

It is really simple. Salt causes fluid retainage which contributes to higher blood pressure. I check and record my weight daily as well as track calories and daily exercise accurately. If I eat a restaurant meal, even if my caloric intake says I don’t exceed daily needs, my weight will increase the next morning. It has increased even after a 12 mile Nordic walk the day before when supposedly I ate 500 calories less than maintenance. It has increased as much as three pounds. That is because restaurants over salt all foods.

At home we have no salt shaker. I salt nothing. Foodbme is right in that using less salt you accentuate the salt you do taste. I can taste the natural salt in foods now.

If you read labels in grocery stores looking for low salt you will start to see a pattern by the food processors. The holy grail of making food taste better is salt, fat and sugar. So if a product is touted as low salt you can bet it will have a higher fat and sugar content over the regular product. Vice versa, reduced fat products tend to have a higher salt content. It can get frustrating if on a low salt, low fat diet and desire not to waste calories on empty sugar calories. That’s one reason I attempt to eliminate processed foods in my diet and eat real foods as much as possible–foods that come with no packaging label.