Reading Labels to watch Salt and discovered I was reading them wrong.......Are you reading them better?

As many of you may know I have been putting in a better effort to lower my salt intake.  The FDA recommends 2 to 2 1/2 grams ( 2000 to 2500 mg ) of salt (or sodium) a day.  I've been trying real hard to stay below that as well as help my family stay below that as well.

Before I got on this kick, I had purchased some things that are not on board with my new lifestyle. Not many items but one in particular was a bowl of Japanese Udon Noodles.  I don't get into a habit of buying stuff like this but thought it might be good for something hot and filling and real easy to make.  So after I said Sayonara to sodium, I looked at that label and was shocked.  Take a look at the sodium count

No your not misreading.  It does say 1520 mg.   click the photo to make it bigger.  You'll see it.  That is almost a full day of salt in one bowl of noodle soup.  Why I didn't throw it away right then and there I don't know.  But I kept it in the pantry.

When shopping at Trader Joe's I came across some of these noodle bowls which looked smaller and I looked at the label and thought these were not great but better than the big bowl I had in my pantry.  So I bought some.  Look at the difference in the sizes.

Packaging plays a huge part here.  The bowl on the right looks huge compared to when you remove the bowl from it's packaging on the left.   Anita pulled the bowl on the left out of the pantry and I told her to take the one on the right and throw it away because it was high in sodium.  She looked at it and was as shocked as I was when she saw that 1520 number.  She looked at the smaller bowl and said, like I did, not great but better  than the other one.  But then she looked closer.   She said did you know that the smaller bowl contains two servings where as the bigger bowl contains one.  Here is the label for the smaller bowl

It has 970 mg of sodium for each serving.  Times two that is 1940 mg.  almost a whole days worth of salt in one small bowl.  Take another look at the serving size on top.  The big bowl is 221 grams in a serving and the smaller bowl has 85 grams for serving, 170 grams total.

So in this situation, the smaller bowl of soup was actually worse than the bigger bowl.  One thing that I know I won't buy anymore are these quick fix bowls.  I think I'll make my own and freeze it for my quick fix.

I have heard that the FDA is now talking about changing the way manufacturers make their labels so it clearly states what the entire portion contains.  For example, an idiot like me won't have to worry about looking at the label and seeing that the small bowl actually contains two servings vs. one.

I hope that this has helped you to look closer at labels as it has for me.