Spice parity

Like most people with a desk job, I eat nearly a third of my meals at the office. Since my tastebuds weren’t actually shot off in the war I find it nice to have access to some of the same spicing and saucing options at work as I have available to me at home.

Salt and pepper shakers in convenient sizes for use at the office are available in most grocery stores; you don’t even have to buy brand name as the store will usually provide a house brand. But perusing the offerings over the weekend I’ve developed a sneaking suspicion that the food industry in America is trying to kill us with salt.

Take Campbell’s Soups. Familiar as both product and art (though art because they are familiar but that’s another down the rabbit hole discussion), a serving of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup has 710mg of sodium per serving. If a serving is 1/2 a cup and each can is about 2.5 servings you’re looking at 1,775mg of sodium per can. Though you’ll be hard pressed to find them (I had to dig out this obscure, undated articled on the FDA’s web site) guidelines for Daily Recommended Values on sodium list 2,400mg/day for an adult consuming 2,000 calories.

Which means with one can of soup eats up 74% of your suggested daily intake of sodium (84% if you make it with 1% milk (124mg sodium/cup x approximately 2 cups per can)). The reduced sodium tomato soup isn’t much better at 1,275 mg/can.

I know, prepared soups are notoriously high in sodium and I picked this example partly because the nutritional data were easy to come by, but I also picked it because I like soup and I’m forced to wonder if there’s already so much sodium in prepackaged food that we should all be wandering around ready to burst a blood vessel why is it possible for me to get double salt shakers but not double pepper shakers?