I have high blood pressure and I’m predisposed to have it; my father’s kind of pumped up too. I haven’t been paying the proper attention to this condition, not as much as a former doctor said I should, but I’m trying to now.
I asked my doctor if leeches would help, but he said no, which didn’t make sense to me; if my blood pressure is high, I must have too much blood, then it would be a good thing to drain some of that blood. Seems like leeches were used a lot a hundred years ago, but they’re making a comeback: the FDA approved the medical use of leeches in 2004.
salty little devils!
Oh, right, Trader Joe’s and sodium … it is absolutely impossible to get something edible in Joe’s that isn’t high in sodium. Even their low sodium products, as they list here, are still too high. They, like a lot of other prepared food manufacturers, jiggle the numbers by decreasing what they call a serving. Too much sodium in a food? Decrease the size of the serving, then you’ve got a low sodium, healthy food (even though nobody I’ve ever known has eaten only 7 tortilla chips in one sitting).
Seven. fucking. chips.
That is one serving in the Soy and Flaxseed Tortilla Chips at Joe’s, which includes 50mg of sodium. I guess that’s not too bad, but the more reasonable serving size (21 chips) brings you to 150mg of sodium.
But who ever eats chips by themselves? I don’t. Never have, I believe. Those chips are shaped to put something on them, so that’s what we do. Looking in my fridge, I’ve got some pretty good store brand salsa; I always have some because it’s good on eggs, rice, just about anything. Anyhow, 21 chips probably deserves about 12 tablespoons of salsa, which is 6 servings of salsa and 630mg of sodium.
Grand total sodium of a real serving of salsa and Trader Joe’s Soy and Flaxseed Tortilla Chips 780mg. That’s just about half the amount of sodium you should consume in a day.
Sodium isn’t crack, and it isn’t tobacco, but has it’s own addictive properties. Trust me. Just writing this, I think I can smell the salty, buttered popcorn.
Photo by kevindooley and republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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