Menu
Sodium gets a lot of press in the nutrition world. You’ve probably heard that in the typical Western diet, we consume too much sodium- and that’s true!
The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines estimate that up to 90% of people over the age of 2 in America are overdoing it on sodium. So it is a nutrient that we need to be mindful of from the beginning with our eaters.
Luckily, it’s also one that we have some pretty clear guidelines on. That can help us make informed choices when feeding our families!
Just want to see the numbers? Click here to see sodium guidelines by age.
First of all, sodium is NOT all bad. (Even for babies! Sodium exists naturally in breastmilk.)
It’s a delicious addition to foods that can add depth to our dishes and bring out savory flavor notes. Properly salting dishes is one of the reasons chef-made food tastes so good!
Salt, which contains sodium and chloride, has many practical uses in cooking. It’s a flavoring agent, but it’s also a preservative, a texture enhancer, a binder, and even a color enhancer.
Your body also needs sodium to function properly. It’s a critical electrolyte that helps muscles and nerves function.
So with sodium, the devil is in the details. Or more accurately, in the dose. HOW much sodium we consume is what matters.
Many things that are good for us in certain amounts become less so in larger amounts. So sodium itself isn’t the villain. The problem is what happens in our bodies when our dietary patterns include more sodium than our bodies need.
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
Consumption of excess (key word: excess!) sodium is correlated with a few increased health risks. A big potential disease risk that increases with elevated sodium consumption is the onset of high blood pressure. We’ve even seen this in childhood, so it’s not an exclusively adult issue.
And as we know, many children have a diet that is a bit too high in sodium, so we’re seeing these numbers on the rise.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, puts a person at a higher risk for heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death in the US.
Obviously, we want to avoid all these things for ourselves and our children! This doesn’t mean you can’t season your food with salt or serve your child’s favorite savory meal/snack. It just means that we want to be mindful of the OVERALL sodium level in the diet.
Let’s dive in to the specifics.
The American Heart Association has published a list to help parents identify the largest contributors of sodium in the diet. It’s not always easy to know which foods have high sodium content. So here is their helpful list:
There are certain things on here that might make you scratch your head. Milk? Too much sodium? A cup of milk has about 100 mg of sodium- not crazy. But it IS something to be wary of if you have a kid that drinks several cups of milk a day AND regularly eats some of the other heavier sources of sodium!
Milk by itself is not going to cause any problems in regards to sodium consumption. But like I always say, it’s the WHOLE picture that’s most important.
As you can see from this list above, many of the biggest high sodium culprits are prepared foods, and often those that we eat out at restaurants.
Pizza, Mexican food, sandwiches/burgers-most of these are loaded up with sodium to increase flavor, prolong freshness), and make them more appealing.
Again, this isn’t a warning to NEVER eat at your favorite Mexican restaurant again. It’s just a helpful reminder of why restaurant food shouldn’t be an everyday thing.
I also want to make a couple additions to this list myself, especially as we’re thinking about kids’ nutrition specifically:
Kids’ snacks are a tricky category because many of them are wonderful, kid-friendly, healthful options! Yet, others are just marketed to kids to make you think they’re more nutritious than they are.
Some snacks, especially some of the crunchy/savory ones, can pack in a huge amount of sodium- chips, crackers, salty snacks, etc.
Check out this blog post for easy healthy snacks you can make at home.
Frozen meals are also a place you’ll find excess sodium. When foods are frozen, sodium is used both as a flavor enhancer and a preservative, so the content gets quite high.
I recommend always checking the labels of the frozen meals you keep on hand so you can keep an eye on sodium content. I look for under 500mg of sodium per serving on frozen meals.
Pasta sauce is known to have extra high sodium contents sometimes. So again, I recommend glancing at the label before you buy!
Some of my favorite pasta sauces that still taste great while keeping sodium content manageable are Primal Kitchen and Rao’s.
For reference- for adults, the recommendation is to limit sodium to 2300 mg per day. The FDA notes that most adults exceed this daily amount. Teenage males exceed it by the highest amount. You don’t need to worry about limiting your sodium much lower than the guidelines. There’s no health benefit to severely restricting sodium (unless directed by a doctor to).
For babies 6 months and younger, the adequate intake (AI) for sodium is 110 mg per day. (Side note: AI is used as a recommended average daily intake level for healthy groups that are assumed to be adequate for that population since we don’t have recommended daily intakes established for that age.)
Since babies 6 months and younger aren’t eating solid food, the only sodium sources they are getting should be breastmilk or formula.
For babies between the ages of 7 and 12 months, the AI goes up slightly to 370 mg per day. During this age range, babies start to get exposed to solid foods, and with that comes a higher amount of sodium. We still don’t want to ADD salt to their foods at this age. I recommend using spices for flavor, but holding the salt for baby’s portion. They’ll also still be getting some from breastmilk and formula at this age.
If you want some guidance on starting solids the healthy way check out my free Simply Solids guide. Starting solids can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! This guide gives you a simple start and shows you what foods to focus on.
The sodium recommendations do liberalize quite a bit after age 1. For children ages 1-3, the AI is 800 mg per day.
It’s still best to limit fast food and ultra processed foods at this point, since the sodium adds up fast. (Not to mention, those aren’t typically the healthiest options anyway.)
But of course you won’t be able to avoid eating out altogether, and that’s okay! Here’s a post with my favorite things to order toddlers at popular restaurants.
Here’s a sample day of meals and snacks that comes out to 1000 mg sodium. It is close enough to the AI for toddlers ages 1-3 that I wouldn’t consider it “bad” at all! And it includes some high sodium items, like the deli meat and cornbread.
Breakfast: smoothie with milk, frozen blueberries, frozen banana, and almond butter, plus 1 whole grain waffle
Lunch: Broccoli, strawberries, a slice of deli turkey, and a serving of homemade cornbread
Snacks: clementines and unsalted cashew pieces, and a pear with 2 Simple Mills cookies
Dinner: plain spinach (yes my kids eat this, I have no idea how they like it), unsweetened applesauce, and a spaghetti + chicken + peas dish with some parmesan cheese
After their first birthday you can begin serving them salted foods. You’ll still want to limit high sodium foods at this point. But now you can serve them many of the foods the rest of the family is eating.
Here is another helpful and informative resource from Solid Starts about sodium and babies/toddlers/kids.
My top tip is to minimize the frequency of eating out, and serve homemade meals as often as possible. That doesn’t mean you have to spend all day in the kitchen! My Meal & Snack Survival Guide is a great resource to use shortcuts to minimize eating out and also get in easy fruit and veg servings.
When at home, be aware of the highest sodium foods and limit how often you serve them.
The main ones to limit include:
You don’t have to cut these foods out. Just be mindful of frequency & amount!
Get familiar with what certain marketing phrases mean. There are actually regulations regarding what companies can and can’t put on their packaging, and certain claims mean different things.
It’s helpful to know these so that you can know what a product IS saying and ISN’T saying.
‘Reduced sodium’ may look nice on a package and lead you to believe it’s low in sodium, but really, all it means is that it’s lower in sodium relative to the original product.So, still check the label!
The FDA also gives a list of tips for minimizing sodium consumption.
Preparing your own food and buying fresh food are great ideas, but don’t feel guilty if you don’t have the capacity to do that all day every day. Almost none of us do!
It’s a great way to be in charge of controlling the amount of sodium in a dish, but there are some great products out there that you can rely on when you can’t always cook.
Some of my favorite low-sodium foods are:
Frozen foods are often very high in sodium. Here are some that are below 500mg per serving. Note this doesn’t classify specifically as “low sodium” but compared to other frozen options, I would choose these. Kidfresh, Dr. Praeger’s, Applegate Naturals, and Banza are some of my favorite go-tos!
Sodium isn’t something to be scared of! In fact, it enhances almost all of our eating experiences.
My goal is just to provide you with some helpful information on the guidelines so you are mindful of your kids not getting too much of an otherwise good thing!
The more we know as parents, the better equipped we are to make good decisions for our children that set them up for a lifetime of health.
If you could use some ideas for how to build nutritious, easy meals and snacks for your family, check out my Meal and Snack Survival Guide. It’s chock full of ideas for every meal and snack as well as product recommendations for my favorite buys at the grocery store!
0 Comments