- Hi, I'm Emma Liu and I'm a registered dietician here at Nashville General Hospital, and we're here today to talk about some ways you can limit salt intake from your diet.

(bright music) - If I'm trying to limit salt, can you explain to me how I take this information on a Cheerios box and do something with it?

- You want to look at the sodium content here.

We do need salt for our body to function properly but we don't wanna have too much salt either.

Water follows salt and so when we consume a lot of it, what ends up happening is our body holds onto a lot of water and then your heart is pumping the water and the blood and so it doubles the amount of strain that is on your heart.

(bright music) It also causes a lot more work on our kidneys which has to filter everything out.

There's a lot of salt that are hidden in our processed foods.

When we really think about it, we consume most of our salt from prepared foods or processed foods.

(upbeat music) When I say low sodium snacks, maybe going for unsalted nuts, which are very heart healthy, fruits, vegetables, fresh fruits and vegetables, of course.

Lunch meats are probably one of the snacks that are really high in sodium.

(upbeat music) When somebody's main objective is to reduce their salt intake, the biggest thing I can tell them is to just stop eating out as much.

We really don't realize how much salt are in our fast food restaurants or in any restaurant at all.

(upbeat music) When you're cooking it at home, you're making it a lot less salty, cooking with rosemary or oregano, thyme, and of course, you've got your lemon juice, your lime juice, which can give it a little bit of that extra kick without adding in any sodium content.

(upbeat music) If you were to prepare that meal at home, you can make a much lower sodium version of it without even really trying, and at the end of the day you might not even notice a difference with the taste, but you'll be saving your heart a lot of trouble.

You'll be saving your body a lot of trouble.

(upbeat music) Again, I'm Emma Liu.

I hope you found these tips helpful to reduce salt intake in your diet, and thank you for joining us for your good health.

(bright music fading)