Sport How much cholestrol and sodium?

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Phate89

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How much cholestrol and sodium are we supposed to have?
I ask because I am worried i am consuming too much of both, a can of tuna has 75mg of cholestrol, and a deli turkey slice has 10mg. And I noticed the tuna has like 750mg of sodium while the turkey has 310 per slice

Is this too much? I eat 1-2 cans of tuna a day, and roughly 5-7 deli turkey slices a day.

Am I going over my limit?
 
The recommendations are 300 or less mg of cholesterol and 2400 mg or less sodium. There is also a push by some to lower the sodium recommendation to 1600 or less. These numbers are the same for everyone, regardless of caloric intake, age, gender etc.

If you think getting saturated fat, cholesterol under the recommendations is hard you should try sodium. I'm there, but it was tough until I got used to it. You have to be extremely vigilant as most food manufacturers (even organic and "health" food companies) load their food with salt....and forget about table salt, one teaspoon is your entire day's worth.

Canned food, unless it is specifically "no salt added" is one of the worst sodium offenders. Deli meat is pretty bad too...and anything at a restaurant LOL, but that should be assumed that most foods at restaurants are bad for you.
 
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It costs more, but I get my canned tuna as "no salt added" or "very low sodium." Then I put a little bit of mustard on it or something like that (for flavor). It winds up giving you a negligible amount of sodium back, but it sure beats the daily sodium hit of regular tuna. After eating like this for a while, whenever I am at someone else's house and I have "regular" canned tuna, it tastes really salty to me. You might want to go this route if you eat 2 cans per day - maybe switch one of them and mix each can as "half and half."

I also try to limit deli meats like turkey in my diet, due to the high sodium and nitrates. Some is inevitable though. The other heavy hitter on my sodium is veggie or soy burgers. I try to find the products that do the least damage on this, but they are all pretty bad.
 
It's hard to keep sodium under the limit. Some people think it doesn't matter, as long as you aren't at direct risk for high blood pressure or other heart disease. Of course, with the rate things are going, just about everyone is at risk for it. Pretty much everyone has a direct relative (or two) with some form of it. Used to, people didn't have to pay special attention to something like sodium intake - if you didn't shake it all over your food, you probably weren't getting too terribly much. Now, though, is a whole different story. Even if you don't have a direct risk of heart disease, chances are you will if you don't pay attention to salt intake, b/c it's hidden in everything we eat.

Anything canned is generally quite high. I always get the "no salt added" canned items, and "reduced sodium" version of anything I can find.

Something a lot of people don't think about are seasonings. Just b/c you don't add actual table salt, doesn't mean you aren't adding a lot of salt whenever you cook. Most every seasoning has salt as the first or second ingredient. I only buy salt-free seasonings (although they are a bit more expensive). Most all seasonings have a salt-free version if you look.
 
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deschain said:
Most every seasoning has salt as the first or second ingredient. I only buy salt-free seasonings (although they are a bit more expensive).
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I just use regular natural spices like basil, pepper, cumin, saffron, etc. great flavor, no salt. I hate salt though. I just checked my fitday and I'm under the daily requirement. Whenever I eat out nowadays, the salt is the first thing I notice in the food.
 
philsaigon said:
I know nothing about tuna because I can't stand the stuff. But, couldn't you eat fresh turkey or chicken breast? Which canned food? Can't you scrap it?
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I eat the tuna for the protein only really, 38g a can. And my parents dont cook and buy that much chicken to where i can eat it daily. Canned kidney beans( 14g a can, black beans, and some other beans
 
Yep, sodium is probably the most difficult thing to control in my nutritional program as well.

I never even paid attention to some things until I was eating a bowl of (brown) rice and looked at the soy sauce...OMG!!! Even the "lite" soy sauce, so named for it's "reduced" sodium is awful, awful stuff.

I do one can of tuna per day (I think I am doing the standard size cans, and you must be eating those jumbos to get 38grams of protein) and I have just given up caring about the sodium in that. I do avoid other canned foods, though, for the sodium reason. Frozen veggies are just too easy and good nowadays to even mess with cans.

I need to get back into the research on the relationship between sodium and potassium, but I did read a book some years ago that sort of, in effect, but not exactly in these words (I'm being non-committal because I don't want to be flamed hard on this if I have it wayyy wrong) that increasing your potassium intake can counter some of the effects of sodium... it was something the author referred to as the "sodium/potassium pump" and he was quite qualified to be speaking such things. I remember he was the same author who wrote the book "smart excercise" probably 10 years ago at least.
Maybe someone here has some insight on this?
 
deschain said:
Some people think it doesn't matter, as long as you aren't at direct risk for high blood pressure or other heart disease.
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Assuming normal kidney function, sodium intake (except for the exceptionally high intake) shouldn't be an issue: your kidneys will naturally filter out the sodium in your urine and maintain your hydration and sodium amounts (Good Lord, I hated renal functioning in my physiology classes!). And unless the individual has cholesterol/CAD issues, dietary cholesterol contributes to only ~3% of total cholesterol, which for a normal, healthy individual isn't an issue...
Of course, with the rate things are going, just about everyone is at risk for it.
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Good point...touche :D
 
Holy cow, I just did a google on "sodium potassium pump" and there is no shortage of information, only a lot of it is way over my head.

My pop is a Dr., so I think I'll give him a buzz and get the laymans lowdown.
 
Krodad said:
it was something the author referred to as the "sodium/potassium pump" and he was quite qualified to be speaking such things. I remember he was the same author who wrote the book "smart excercise" probably 10 years ago at least.
Maybe someone here has some insight on this?
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The sodium/potassium pump is an organic "pump" (a so-called "active transporter" because it requires energy to operate) that works by removing 3 sodium ions across the cell membrane (or "skin", which is a phospholipid bilayer that, among other things, contains cholesterol that acts to strengthen the lipid bilayer membrane) out of the cell for every 2 potassium ions into the cell. By doing this, the cell maintains sodium and potassium gradients that are responsible for cellular signaling (action potentials) as well as secondary transports of things like glucose into the cell.

If that made sense :D
 
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