Do you know how much sodium you’re suppose to eat a day? At the absolute most, 2,400 milligrams. How much does the average American consume each day? More than 3,400 milligrams.
We need salt in our diets to maintain the proper balance of fluids in the body, but overdoing it is detrimental to our health – and as you can see, that’s not hard to do! You can cut back on frozen, process foods and put the salt shaker in the back of the pantry, but if you’re not cutting back on fast food and sit-down restaurant meals, you’re probably not going to make a dent in your sodium levels.
In fact, according to Eat This Not That, restaurant food supplies 80 percent of the sodium in the American diet – 80 percent! It’s time to fight back and call out all these salty offenders.
So without further ado, here are the new saltiest foods in America:
8. Saltiest Pasta
Ruby Tuesday Mediterranean Shrimp Pasta: 3,737 mg sodium, 1,102 calories, 65 g fat. That’s a lot of salt for a pasta dish! In fact, most of Ruby Tuesday’s pasta dishes have over 2,000 mg of sodium, and four others have over 3,000!
7.Saltiest Mexican Entrée
On the Border Dos XX Fish Tacos: 3,740 mg sodium, 2,150 calories, 144 g fat (31 g saturated). These tacos pack more than 2 days’ worth of sodium, a days’ worth of calories, and as much saturated fat as 31 strips of bacon.
6. Saltiest Starter
Applebee’s Chili Cheese Nachos: 1,680 calories, 107 g fat (40 g saturated, 2.5 g trans), 4,270 mg sodium. This starter is the sodium equivalent to 18.5 orders of Taco Bell’s Cheesy Nachos! Why so much sodium for Applebee’s order? It’s the huge portion size combined with all the high-sodium toppings piled on: chili, cheese sauce, tortilla chips, and salsa. Skip it!!
5. Saltiest Breakfast
IHOP Thick-Cut Bone-In Ham & Eggs: 1,170 calories, 61 g fat (19 g saturated), 4,310 mg sodium. Sodium equivalent? 32 strips of bacon!
4. Saltiest “Healthy” Entrée
Applebee’s Weight Watchers Chipotle Lime Chicken: 4,990 mg sodium, 490 calories, 12 g fat (2 g saturated). This is just wrong. Sure, it has less than 500 calories, which is hard to find when eating out, but with nearly 5,000 mg of sodium it’s not a healthy choice by any means.
3. Saltiest Soup
P.F. Chang’s Hot and Sour Soup Bowl: 400 calories, 15 g fat (5 g saturated), 5,000 mg sodium. You know you’re looking at a high-sodium dish when you order soup, but 5,000 mg of sodium in one little 400-calorie bowl? That’s crazy! And who just orders a bowl of soup? You could walk out of the restaurant consuming twice that amount!
2. Saltiest Burger
Chili’s Jalapeno Smokehouse Bacon Burger with Ranch Dressing: 2,210 calories, 144 g fat (46 g saturated), 6,600 mg sodium. Chili’s only has one item with less than 1,000 mg of sodium on their menu: a caribbean salad. The vast majority of their items have between 3,000 and 4,500 mg of sodium, but this burger is by far the worst.
1. Saltiest Food in America
P.F. Chang’s Pork Double Pan Fried Noodles: 1,652 calories, 84 g fat (12 g saturated), 7,900 mg sodium. This dish packs nearly 4 days worth of sodium – 4 days! You can search long and hard for a dish with comparable sodium stats, but the fact is, nothing comes close to this dish…and neither should you!
