More and more American’s are trying to be more health conscious these days. It’s not always to physically look better; often times it’s because their doctor recommends it. One of the things that many people intake way too much of is sodium (or for you dummies out there, salt).

A sought-after nutritionist, and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, David Grotto, RD, LDN, answered the question:
Is salt bad for you?

Grotto: “No. If used appropriately, salt is not bad for you. We’re not required to eat [table] salt because we can find salt naturally occurring in a variety of different foods that we eat. But most cultures around the world use salt and not all of them have a hypertension epidemic.”

Ahh.. so now everyone can rest a little better knowing that SOME salt is okay. However, this is true for most foods. Most everything is okay in moderation. I mean, fast food isn’t good for you- at all- but if you eat a fast food meal like.. once a month, it won’t kill you. It’s a good way to change your eating habits without torturing yourself.

For example: if you drink a lot of soda; this obviously isn’t good for you. However, you don’t have to cut it out of your diet entirely. You should begin by simply cutting back. Say you have one soda a day, try to go with 4 a week, or one every other day. Then, slowly, you can begin to cut it out of your diet and maybe have one once a week or so, which won’t harm your health.

So, at the end of the day, you don’t have to cut out ALL of the things that you love to try to stay healthy. It’s OKAY to drink a beer every once in a while (haha.. well, let’s skip over that one because for many of us, a “once in a while” beer will never happen.. ha ha, more like.. a bunch of times, a lot of the time..), a candy bar seldomly is okay and a salty snack won’t kill you. Just do it in moderation and you will be fine. Listen to your doctor; they aren’t stupid like most of you

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(from) http://www.aolhealth.com/diet/basics/low-sodium