So, due to some recent health issues, I have been trying to watch the amount of sodium I eat. My doctor’s recommended 2,000 milligrams or less of sodium a day, which is pretty much what the USDA recommends for everyone. Well, let me tell you, it is not easy to do! It seems like anything that is processed in any way has more sodium than you would think! I knew that many frozen meals and soups had lots of sodium in them, but I didn’t realize how much was in a simple slice of whole wheat bread (150-200 mg per slice!) or a tablespoon of ketchup (200 mg per tablespoon). Soup, a winter time staple for me, apparently cannot be made without a salt lick or two added to the pot.
So, I’ve been looking for some products to substitute into my daily life that would help me lower the amount of sodium I’m taking in. Two products I tried from Trader Joes were the low sodium organic butternut squash soap and the sodium free whole wheat bread.
The soup was promising in that it was only about 70 mg of sodium per cup, which is less than one quarter of the sodium in ‘regular’ soup. It comes in a cardboard container that allows you to pour out the amount you need and refrigerate the rest. That was great. The soup itself wasn’t so great. It just didn’t have much flavor and was a thick consistency that wasn’t appealing to me. I ended up giving the rest of the carton to my mother-in-law to try. It really just wasn’t to my taste at all.
The next product I tried was the zero sodium whole wheat bread. I was very sceptical of this, as I have tried to make bread without salt myself and have had very little luck. This bread was very dry and not very tasty, due to the lack of salt, I’m sure. I would never use it as a sandwich bread. However, it wasn’t terrible when I toasted it and added a bit of peanut butter to it. So, it wasn’t a complete fail. I should also note that I have not seen 0 sodium bread anywhere else, so I do appreciate that TJs carries a product that no one else does.
Overall, neither of the low sodium products I tried were fantastic. Salt, I am finding out, is truly the spice of life! However, given the necessity for this kind of a product in my life, I would buy both of them again and try to doctor them up to make them more palatable to me.
