Theresa Albert is a nutritionist, best-selling cookbook author, and Food Network personality, and we're thrilled to have her with us for the next few weeks to provide her unique brand of cooking and nutritional knowledge. The news media is all over the salt topic, and with good reason, but sodium isn’t the whole picture.  In my private practice, I hear people say “oh, we put away the salt shaker years ago!” They’re usually surprised to hear that the salt shaker is the least of their worries. Most of the salt that we consume comes from packaged or prepared foods, so unless you are cooking at home from scratch 80% of the time, you are likely consuming too much salt. We need about 500 mg of sodium per day to survive and the suggested maximum is set at 2500 mg for an adult with no risk factors. (Risk factors include things as simple as being over 40 and complex as hypertension or high blood pressure). Many experts agree that a safer number is actually around 1500 mg but the food labels on packages give you a percentage based on 2500mg, which can complicate matters unless you are much better and faster at math than I am. The best solution to sodium is to cook at home and know what is going into your food.  I use prepared foods judiciously rather than religiously by always making sure that they are in balance with the other things on my plate.  I love restaurants and sometimes, like everyone, I need to save time at a drive-thru and use packages to save a long, busy day from becoming a disastrous one. But making sure that most of what is on my family’s dinner plate is fresh, single ingredient food is crucial to controlling the salt (and many other things!) The upside of filling that plate with fresh vegetables and whole grains is that these foods help your body metabolize the sodium with their high potassium content. So, even if you slip up once in a while and have takeout pizza and movie popcorn on one day, the rest of your week will help you stay on track. Some of the worst offenders come in the most innocuous of packages. Foods like tomato sauce, pickles, sauerkraut, canned tuna and vegetable juice can provide ¼ to ½ of a day’s worth of salt in one delicious (and otherwise nutritious) serving.  Rather than avoiding these foods altogether I suggest that we mitigate their impact by stretching them. ·    Mix together a can of unsalted tomatoes with your favorite tomato sauce. ·    Check labels on pickles, brands do vary widely. Consume only a few. ·    Rinse sauerkraut through a sieve before eating. It’s still delicious and healthy. ·    Drain canned tuna well and mix in some yogurt instead of mayo. Stretch it even further with some chopped green onion and celery. ·    Vegetable juice can be mixed with other juices or watered down for less sodium per sip. In the end, what you really want to do is eat as much as possible that hasn’t been packaged for you to mitigate the risk and keep sodium levels at healthy levels.