We don’t need all that much—200 milligrams a day, about what you would get with six or eight vigorous shakes of a salt cellar—but we take in about sixty times that amount on average. In a normal diet it is almost impossible not to overload on sodium, because there is so much salt in the processed foods we eat with such ravenous devotion. Often it is heaped into foods that don’t seem salty at all—breakfast cereals, prepared soups, and ice cream, for instance. Who would guess that an ounce of cornflakes contains more salt than an ounce of salted peanuts? Or that the contents of one can of
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