salt
 

I am trying to quit smoking and in place of cigarettes I am eating my childhood favorite, salted sunflower seeds. I am curious as to what effect the salt is going to have on my diabetes and my LC diet. Can anyone give me some answers?

tnt, good for you for quitting! :thup: You can be a quitter and a loser now :)

Sodium, in moderation, is not bad for us. We actually need some of it to be healthy. General recommendations are for 2.4g a day (2,400mg). I plugged your sunflower seeds into the carb counter and I got 814mg of sodium per cup of hulled, roasted, salted seeds. That's a lot of sunflower seeds and relatively speaking, not much sodium. They also contain 652mg of potassium. At the end of the day, it's the potassium:sodium ratio that matters more than the actual sodium number for most of us. It should be 2:1 (p:s). Now, I'm not sure if there are specific concerns with sodium for diabetics, but for non diabetics having little more sodium one day doesn't necessarily mean anything bad will come. Keeping water intake up, and choosing more natural foods (unprocessed foods that is) will help keep potassium up and sodium down in your other meals. This should balance things out.

Excessive sodium will lead to water retention. But, keep in mind there is more sodium in food that is processed - cheeses, bacon, sugar free pudding or jello - all have more sodium than salted nuts / seeds per regular serving size.

HTH
Nat