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Learn From the Label - Read the labels and choose prepared and processed foods with less sodium.
- Look for packaged foods that make claims about sodium or salt.
| Sodium free or Salt free |
Less than 5 mg/serving |
| Unsalted, or No salt added |
No salt added during processing |
| Low sodium |
140 mg or less |
| Light in sodium |
50% less sodium than regular version |
| Reduced sodium |
25% less sodium than regular version |
- Check the ingredient list. If one of these items is listed as first or second ingredient, the food is likely very high in sodium:
- salt
- sodium
- monosodium glutamate (MSG)
- baking sodium/sodium bicarbonate
- baking powder
- soy sauce
- brine
- Look at the Nutrition Facts
on the package. (Almost all pre-packaged foods have a Nutrition Facts table, making it easier to see how much sodium is in any given food.)
- Check the percentage of the Daily Value (%DV) for sodium. The %DV tells you at a glance if there is a lot or a little of a nutrient in that specific amount of food. **Foods with 20 percent or more Daily Value of sodium are considered high.
- Use the %DV to compare food products. Compare the food labels of these two types of canned tomatoes. The regular canned tomatoes (right) have 15 times as much sodium as the low-sodium canned tomatoes.
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