People trying to cut salt usually start at the dining table. It is the wrong place to look.
The salt that matters is already in the food before it reaches you. Packaged namkeen and chips, of course — but also biscuits, bread, instant noodles, ready-made masala mixes, sauces, papad, pickle, processed cheese, and almost every restaurant gravy.
Bread is the quiet one. It does not taste salty, and most people eat several slices without thinking about it. A packet of instant noodles can carry most of a day’s recommended sodium in one bowl.
The WHO suggests keeping sodium under about 2 grams a day — roughly 5 grams of salt, about one level teaspoon, from everything combined. Indian diets typically run at nearly double that.
Three changes that actually move the number:
1. Read the label for sodium per 100g, not per serving — serving sizes are optimistic. Under 120mg per 100g is low; over 600mg is high.
2. Build flavour with something other than salt. Lemon, black pepper, roasted jeera, garlic, amchur and fresh coriander all give the brain the intensity it was asking for.
3. Treat papad, pickle and namkeen as occasional rather than default. They are small in volume and enormous in sodium.
Leave the shaker alone. Read the packet instead.
