With all the discussion about forcing food manufacturers to lower their sodium content, many people are left wondering what the right amount of dietary sodium is. If you’ve read the food labels on packages lately, you may have noticed that many foods contain hundreds of mg of sodium and others may even contain over 1000 mg. How much is too much?

The answer, according to the 2005 dietary guidelines, was 2300 mg per day (the equivalent to a little over a teaspoon of salt). But the 2010 guidelines are going to suggest 1500 mg as a daily intake, largely to target the significant number of people who have tendencies towards high blood pressure Americans average closer to 4000 mg per day!

The average high sodium intake isn’t usually from people salting their food–it takes a lot of sprinkles to get over a teaspoon of salt on your food. But a large amount is present in packaged, processed, and fast foods. This is why the food manufacturers are being challenged to lower their sodium content, to help people reduce their usual intake.

In the mean time, what can you do?

1) Read labels all of the time. You won’t have any idea how much sodium you’re eating unless you read the package. As for fast foods, all the chain restaurants have their nutritional information available on the internet. Go to the restaurant’s official site and look for nutritional information and you’ll find every single food and condiment listed with their sodium content (along with calories, fat, protein, and other nutrients).

2) Aim for 500 mg per meal to total 1500 mg per day. This way you don’t have to keep a running tally all day, every day. Many foods prepared at home will have very little sodium: fresh meats, eggs, fruits and vegetables won’t usually bring you near 100 mg per serving. Higher amounts are found in cheeses and baked goods (a few hundred mg). Smoked, salted and processed foods (like ham, lunch meats, canned vegetables, salted snacks, canned stews and frozen meals) will range from a few hundred to a few thousand mg. Foods like pickles, olives, ham, corned beef and prepared meals should be used very sparingly.

3) Don’t go overboard on low-sodium products. Eating too little sodium could potentially be unhealthy as well. We still do need some sodium in our diet to help maintain fluid balance. Physiologically we only need a few hundred milligrams and a little more to replace losses in sweat. The Adequate Intake set by the Food and Nutrition Board is 500 mg. Buying special low sodium breads and dairy products while the remainder of the diet is composed of fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables can result in a dangerously low intake. Buying unsalted pretzels or lower-sodium canned soups is smart. Use good judgment and a little balance to get enough sodium without getting too much on most days. The range between 500 mg and 1500 mg gives you quite a bit of leeway.