Where do you get your nutrition information from? From your doctor, from a dietitian, maybe it's from the Nutrition Couch, or maybe it's from a nutritionist or a health coach online. The thing with nutrition is there's a wide range and varying degrees and lots and lots of experts out there. So today on the Nutrition Couch, where can I share with you who you should really be listening to and what the differences are between the different types of qualifications. Hi, I'm Leanne.
Ward and I'm Suzyburrow, And.
Every week we bring you The Nutrition Couch, the bi weekly podcast that keeps you up to date on everything that you need to know in the world of nutrition, so as well as nutrition and health qualifications. Today we're going to take a closer look at what really is a treat and our listener question today is all about salt and how much should we really be having. But to kick us off today, Susie, we have a very ilways say, somewhat controversial topic to talk about the difference
between a nutritionist and a dietitian and I guess. Our concern is that the nutrition I guess word or qualification is largely unregulated in Australia and in many parts of the world. So the term dietitian is highly regulated. If somebody is calling themselfs a dietitian, they've gone through a minimum of four years of a science based degree, They've done multiple practical placements under a supervision in hospital. They have the science and the clinical practice behind them. That's
a dietitian. The qualification itself is very tightly regulated and they are the only people that can work within a hospital setting in Australia as well. Now, when it comes to nutrition, anybody can call themselves of a nutritionists. My neighbor could literally start an Instagram page and be like, I'm a health nutritionist, come and follow me, pay me for my plans. It's appalling, it's scary. Anybody can call themselves a health coach. Anybody can call themselves a health blogger.
Anybody that can call themselves a weight loss expert. There is zero regulation within the field within Australia, but in many parts of the world as well, So that's the scariest part, Susie. But then we've also got some perfectly wonderful professionals that are registered nutritists that do have university and science degrees within nutrition. So it's very, very difficult to pull these two terms apart. But I thought that I would first start off with I guess the main
difference between most nutritionists and most dietitians. And when I say nutritionists, I'm really talking about the properly qualified ones, not the one that I've just done a four week course online or that's done absolutely nothing in them they're calling themselves a health blogger or nutritionnis online. So I think whenever you go and you see someone, you need to ask to see their degree. You need to say, what if you studied? Can I see your degree? Can
I see your insurance policy? Because unless they have a proper degree, unless they have proper insurance, should you really be seeing them? Should you be trusting their advice? Should you be dming your favorite instagrammer online because they're a health blogger and they lost twenty killers themselves and asking them for advice. No, the answer is no, because they're not probably qualified. So I wanted to start off with
today by going through the definition of a dietitian. So, a dietitian is a professional that applies the science of food and nutrition to promote health and to prevent and treat diseases, including clinical diseases, to then optimize the health of that individual or group or community or population. So the biggest difference between a dietitian and nutritionist comes really down to the clinical aspects of the condition of an individually.
Largely nutritionists work with healthy populations. They can give advice around health, around weight loss, and generally with population groups or sometimes with individuals as well. But the biggest difference between dietitians is as a clinical aspect to a lot of the conditions. And then there's a whole lot of murky area in between. Is there suz between unregistered nutritionists
or health bloggers and then actual qualified nutritionists. Then there's a new term coming out called a clinical nutritionists, and then there's dietitians as well. It's very confusing. It's a bit of a mindfield. I'm not even sure if dietitians understand all the different types of nutritionness and health bloggers on the market at the moment.
So I wanted to discuss this because I had an email come through and it said, I really need to help. I've been seeing a nutritionist and she described the diet
that she'd been doing and it was quite extreme. It was quite damaging metabolically, and I knew exactly where she'd followed that diet, and I also knew the person who had written it was not qualified, and so I see that come through, and it does huge amounts of damage metabolically to people because of course extreme diets that are restrictive and extremely low carbohydrate, and if you've got medical
conditions like polycystic oovies Inshaw resistance. It just reminded me of the fact that there are a number of people giving applied nutrition advice in mainstream media who were not qualified.
So I wanted to discuss it. So I think the blurry.
Area for me is, yes, dietitians are an accredited profession similar to an accountant. You can be a bookkeeper and very good at money, but you're not a registered accountant. So for me, the dietitians the registered professional. We've had the medical training, we've got a degree, we've got an association, we're answerable to. We have to do peer reviewed work, have to do continuing education, and follow a scientific model of inquiry. We can be audited, we're controlled, very similar
to medical profession. The issue, nutritionally is that there are a lot of what I would describe as qualified nutritionists who have a science degree.
You know, I know.
Several very respected nutritionists who have been to university and studied for three four years in an area of nutrition, and certainly compared to a health coach or someone who doesn't have a science degree.
They're pretty qualified. No, they're not a dietitian.
And if they were writing prescriptive meal plans for someone with a medical condition, I would have concern. But if they're giving general advice, cooking healthy recipes, you know, encouraging people to eat better, you know, they have a science degree. The issue I have is that there's a growing number of clinical nutritionists doing the round and in mainstream media
who don't have a science degree. And I'm calling that shouldn't be allowed, and I'm appalled in some instances that it has been allowed in television.
It has been allowed in.
Media because journalists who would claim to be the ones who do the research and make sure that all the data is correct, don't check the qualifications of the content that they are actively promoting to the mass population.
They're basically not qualified.
You know, you don't have someone who has an interest in medicine on the morning show talking about medicine, they're a doctor, and as should be the case, it should be a dietitian or at least a nutritionist who has a science degree. So the message for our listeners is we're not here to dish people and their work. But what we're saying is that if you're someone who has a medical issue, if you've got complicated weight loss, if you've got hormone issues, family history to take into account,
you need to see someone who is qualified. So you need to ask do you have a science degree? Are you a registered professional? Can I claim you from a health fund? Can I claim you from Medicare? And if the answer is no, I'd be questioning if that's the right person for you, because just because a health coach looks slim and healthy, does it mean they're qualified in
the science of nutrition. And when I get emails like that and I know exactly where those people have been and what diets have been doing, I just think they should shouldn't be allowed to happen. And I think that
we should be more transparent. And I think if any journalists are listening, you need to make sure that if you've got nutritionists writing for your publication that they at least have a science degree, because you're accountable to the population to be giving evidence based advice, and it's a question of actual having the qualification to do so.
So there's a difference.
Between getting on TV being a chef cooking a chocolate cake and calling it healthy because you chuck some avocado into it, and then giving advice on who that recipe is for, whether it's good for high blood pleasure, cholesterol, and giving applied nutritional advice. So you know, journalists need to take a look at where they're getting information because they don't often do the research, and hence we've got situations where there's people in mainstream media who don't have a science degree.
Yeah. I think my biggest grap is that a lot of quite uncreat nutrition is without the science degrees, like you mentioned, So they've got a certificate in nutrition, but they're not university qualified. They don't have that science background. These type of quote unquote nutritionists are very largely you need to go gluten free, you need to go dairy free, you need to go refine sugar free, and it's the
same cookie cutter meal plan time and time again. No calves, no sugar, no dairy, no gluten, And it's like again and again and again, and Susie and I are just getting so frustrated seeing all of these clients, and I'm like, you can have dairy, you can have gluten, you can eat a little bit of sugar. Let's talk about your goals. You know, just because you have you know, I don't know,
an autoimmune condition doesn't mean you can't have dairy. Just because you might have PCOS doesn't mean you can't have sugar. So it really nutrition needs to be personalized. And I think that's the biggest difference between a lot of nutritions and dieticians, at least the properly qualified nutritionists are that there's a lot of just cookie cutter programs out there floating around without the personalized aspects. So I was just doing a little bit of a hunt to see the
different types of degrees. And I think if I'm being on a Susie, a lot of nutritionists go in thinking they do have the proper qualifications and then being told by their certificate or course or wherever they've studied that they are allowed to do what they're doing, and in all, honestly they probably shouldn't be doing it right. They shouldn't be giving people advice if you've got you know, inflammatory
bout disease. You shouldn't be giving out personalized advice if you've got a condition like PCOS or like insulin resistance, because there is that medical and science based background that you need to have that knowledge. And if you've just done a tape certificate or a course, you shouldn't really
be giving out this clinical advice. So I found a good article on tape courses Australia Suzi about the difference between nutritions and dietitians, and essentially it breaks it down into this quite easy to understand table where you've got a certificate or a course in nutrition versus a properly accredited dietitian, both nutritions and dietitians. As long as you've got that qualification, you're not just calling yourself a nutritionist for kicks, and you need to be very careful with
that to our listeners. You need to actually make sure somebody does have a qualification. Then it's what type of qualification, Where did that come from? Have you studied science and anatomy and physiology, and you know, do you understand some basic BIOCHM practices if we're giving out that personalized advice. So in this little table that they brought up, Suzi, it says here that nutritions and dietitians can both offer basic health and wellness advice. They can both offer some
weight loss advice. They can both offer meal planning advice. However, nutritionists cannot offer individualized meal plans for specific health conditions. Dietitism can. Dietitians can treat and prevent diseases. Nutritionists can't. Nutritionists cannot offer medical nutrition therapy. Dietitians can. Dietitians are properly accredited, They have to do a certain number of PD every single year, and they have to be supervised
within their first few years of practice. Nutritionists don't. Dietitians will have again that supervision, that practical assessment for many years first, and will always have at the bare minimum of bachelor's degree from university to be a dietitian. Nutritionist stn't so. I think the biggest thing is that that
nutritionist term is highly unregulated. But it does say in this little article that generally a nutritionists role is to help their client by providing advice and encouragement around healthy eating. They can provide and encourage healthy eating. Is this with weight management? This was weight loss goals, meal planning, giving out basic advice in life with the strange guides healthy
eating and promoting general healthy advice and wellness advice. And obviously we see a lot of great nutritionalists aligned doing a lot of wonderful healthy recipes, and that's wonderful. But where the line becomes a little bit blurred, Susie, is where these guys are giving out general weight loss advice, but the client's also got pcos. They're giving out general weight loss advice, but the client's also pregnant. They're giving out general weight loss advice, but the client also has
you know, quite bad IBS coupled with Crohn's disease. And that's where the lines are becoming very blared, and the general population don't really understand the difference between the qualifications.
And largely media, I guess hasn't really helped us, Susie, because you and me are doing a bit of work this week with a couple of students that we had and one of the students said, Leanne and Susie, you know, we read about your a lot online, and why do you sometimes call yourselves nutritionists in the media, And I basically said to one of them, we don't call ourselves nutritions. Generally,
we will always call ourselves dietitians. But if a journalist is writing an article about Susie, they might say this nutritionist tips, or about me, they might see this nutrition recommends these five foods for calcium, And that's a journalist's decision to call us nutritionists over dietitians, because all dietitians are also nutritionists, but not all nutritionists are actually dietitians, and that's where it becomes a bit harder. So I think a lot of times in the media, even if
we're dietitians, were written about as nutritionists. And so I think the general population thinks that the term nutritionists is more highly qualified than dietitians, or they think that that term for some reason is broader than it even is. Like, what are your thoughts around that? Like I have noticed a lot of journals calling dietitians to nutritionists and leaving off the dietitian qualification altogether. And again, it's just more confusing for the general population.
Yeah, it's interesting, it's changed I started working in television in two thousand and six and then I subsequently was on Sunrise.
For twelve years now.
They always preferred nutritionists in terms that they felt it was a more user friendly message, and to be honest, I didn't push it.
Now in my work, I'm much.
More distinct to say dietitian, and I've noticed with my headline on nine Honey on Body and Soul, they're seeming to prefer dietitian, the Dietitian's top five, the dietitians top five. So I feel that educating the media in that space, health and lifestyle journalists who you know don't necessarily have those nuances themselves. They might not have been to university themselves instead of done cadetships and journalism. So I think it's really important that they are aware that dietitian is
that the real qualification. If someone's a dietitian, they should be referred to them as such and are certainly getting any kind of information buying diet books, prescriptive weight loss books if it's written by a nutritionist, so I would be very quickly checking if they've got a science degree, and if it's not written there, they probably don't have one, So just be taking it with a grain of salt.
Because if you're a dietitian or qualified, or have a degree, you mention it, you talk about it because it creates
that credibility. So I think just coming into diet season, which is what we call the period through summer, when there is a lot of diet books on the market and a lot of information floating around, I would really be making sure that if if you're taking that information and using it, I would be checking that if it is a nutritionist, even if they write clinical nutritionists, it actually doesn't mean anything you can use that term freely. You want to make sure there is a science degree there.
And if they don't mention it, I guarantee lea and they don't have one. So I'd be really taking the information with a grain of salt.
And I think the most important thing as well, just to double check when you are seeing a professional is to us if they're insured. Like that would be the biggest red flag for me. If you're seeing somebody and they're giving you a prescriptive nutrition plan, they're actively cutting out food groups or saying to you can't have dairy, it's inflammatory, it's bad. You can't have this, you can't
have that. Ask if they have insurance, because if they don't have insurance, that is a scary thing because if anything were to happen to you or you know, your house took a backward step because you're following this advice room of a professional or quote unquote professional who isn't actually qualified. The saddest part is that's on you because you didn't do your research. You didn't check. There's nobody, there's no governing body to pull these people up. You
can't do you register them. They will never register in the first place. Then I've had a qualification to take away.
Or as a real life thing, the client who messaged me to say that she's been doing this diet, it's played habit with a metabolism. Now she can't get weighed off. She's you know, depleted. You have physically damaged your body because of doing a diet that was overly restrictive and inappropriate for you. You need massive diet rehab. And I just went, oh, ok, that is too much for me because I know the diet she's been on and I know the work that will be required to shift that metabolism.
After following such a restrictive diet for so long, so you know, beware because it can be actually damaging physiologically, particularly if you've got some of those hormonal conditions or they haven't been diagnosed, because that non qualified person actually hasn't picked up on that, because they're not looking for
those medical indicators as we would be, all rightly. And hopefully that's helpful to our listeners because I know a lot of people are, you know, getting advice or following nutrition, and I hopefully it encourages you to look up that background of people that perhaps you're following. But moving a different note, I was listening to a Gabby Bernstein pod.
Now.
Gammy Bernstein is sort of a self help guru. She's been around for many, many years. She has a lot
of stuff around manifesting. She again is not scientifically qualified and clearly states so, but she often has experts on and she was talking about an expert she interviewed who was a medical doctor, and he they were talking about reframing the idea of treats because she said, in life often we're looking to treat ourselves and whether that's a shopping spree or getting a massage, or often, and we talk about this tou lean treating yourself with a food,
you know, perhaps after you have had a big day or once a week, or there's this idea of a treat. And the discussion on the podcast was around if it's doing damage to your body, it's not a treat. So if your idea of a treat is holing into a big piece of cake or a process food, or a fast food meal or even you know, confectionery ice cream at the end of a long day, if it's ultra process food, we really need to re.
Examine our idea of a treat.
And I thought Leanne straight away, this is something and this is a good example of why dietitians professional because we sort of constantly evaluating our work and considering it scientifically.
And I thought, that is true.
I need to be much clearer with clients when I'm suggesting that they might have a treat, to make sure that it doesn't translate into a treat that's crap quality food. So when I'm thinking crap quality food, I'm thinking blocks of commercial chocolate that's filled with confectionery.
I'm thinking fast food.
I'm thinking, you know, process biscuits, I'm thinking process ice creams where you look at the ingredient list and it's a mile long and it's ultimately lean, an ultra process food. And I think I too, and probably both of us, we need to be clearer that when we say a treat or sort of have something that you're soul food,
that we are talking about ideally good quality soul foods. So, for example, you're going to be much better to have a couple of squares of eighty five percent linch chocolate than you are to have a few squares of Marvelous Creations. And the difference is that Marvelous Creations is pack full of color, flavor, confectionery, chocolate, lollies, many many ingredients, compared to say a couple of box of a high quality dark chocolate that's only got two or three or in
the case of ice cream. And we're both guilty of this, if it's less than one hundred calories, we say it's all right. Whereas you're much better to have, say a twisted frozen yogurt, which is a very clean ingredient list and far less processed than some of the mainstream kind of brands and outlets that have got colors and flavors and a really long ingredient list. So I just wanted to clarify that and think, you know, I agreed with
that message. Putting poor quality food into your body is not a treat, And I think when we reframe that and make sure that the treats we're choosing are the highest quality possible nutritionally, that's a much better message than to say, oh, well, you can have macas once a week because it's a treat and you deserve it.
Yeah. I agree, But also I guess I'm going to be a little bit because.
I think you're thinking of those ice the col's ice greeno ones.
No, no, no, I'm just trying to say that. What I generally say to my clients is if you truly love something, I don't care if it's cabarery, marble, whatever. I don't care if it's got a bit of artificial colors or whatnot in I don't care if it's not clean food. If you truly truly love something, and I mean love like it would be on your top ten foods if you were going to die tomorrow, and you could have five to ten foods, and that was the last five to ten foods you ever eat, those sorts
of things would be on there right. And I think where the lines get blurred are we think that we like treats, and we do like treats. But I'm when I say to my clients, are soult food, it's something you truly truly love. You don't like because I like a chicken salad, but I also like a lot of biscuits. But I don't eat a lot of biscuits because one is good for me the chicken salad, and one is
not so great for me. Majority of biscuits. So if I'm going to put something into my body, like you said, I have to truly truly love it, not just like it. And I think where most people go wrong. And this is what I try to teach some of my clients Susie around. There's that balance between healing your relationship with food generally truly enjoying foods that you love, and leaving the foods that you like on the table because we're
putting too many things that we just like. The bowl of chocolates in the office, the banana bread somebody bake that something we had at our mother in law's house, nibbling off the kids plates. We like a lot of that stuff. So I'm in agree. And Susie, when you say that poor quality treats with terrible ingredients, if you just like them, leave them alone, because you're just putting crap in your body. You can either put that in the bin or you can put it in your body.
It's crap food. But if you truly truly love it, if you truly loved twisties like they were, like, if I had one last day on Earth, I would have a bag of twisties because I absolutely joking. No, I'm not joking. I would actually be okay with clients occasionally. No, I don't like twist it's I love twisties. I would be okay with them eating them. It was just a random thing, just twisties. Yeah, I don't love them, but they're not my thing. But for some of my clients
they are, and I'm okay. I'm like, okay, cool, we can have them. That's cool. We'll work them into your meal plans. But if they're like, look, I like twisties. My kids have them all the time, they're in the house, but I don't love them, love them, I'll be like, leave them alone. Put the twisties back in the cupboard. We're not working them into the meal plan. They're not
good for you, We're not got to do it. So I think it's that blurry line between I like it versus I love it, And you have to truly love what you're eating if it's not actually good for you. And let's be honest, there's that blurred line between healing our relationship with food, achieving fat loss, and also achieving help. And they're three separate components, but they can kind of work together. But you have to be very clear on the foods that you truly love and the others that
you just like and leave them alone. Because the majority of the treats that we like that are good for us, like I say, ninety percent of them have crap quality ingredients in there. So you can do what Zusie suggested and choose better quality types, and certainly from a health perspective, that's much better. But in my experience, if you truly love something, cutting it out all together just because it has terrible ingredients can often cause you to then go
and overeat it later on. But it's a fine balancing app But I think too many of us are just eating too much of the crap tweats that we like because they're available and they're around, versus the fact that we truly love them.
Yeah, And I think though, we do need to be very clear that when it's really poor quality processed food, Like I've just had a look at the ingredient list of Twisties, it's refined cereal, vegetable oil, cheese powder, MSG. Like, we need to be clear though and call out ultra process ultimate crap food, like as I said, I've just done a review on say, Burger King, KFC Machers, like even I was horrified at the what's in these meals?
So I think, you know, yes, it's a treat, but let's be also clear that it's not good for the body. That I think that's the message that this doctor was saying. We're relating it as a treat as in something positive, but we've got to be very clear that in the case of those ultra process foods. So the ingredient lists a mile long with lollies and flavor enhancers and fast food, is it really a treat when ultimately it's doing damage
to the body. And I think think that is a worth and I will certainly in my own communications be clearer with clients to say, look, yes you've got some extra calories to play with with something you enjoy, but.
These are the better options.
So you're one hundred percent better to have the ninety percent dark chocolate then the other type of chocolate that's heavily processed. So I just I thought it was an interesting discussion because if you were saying to people that cakes a treat, but it's actually full of process crap, it's not good for you, I think it starts to take the emotion away from a treat to actually saying that is just not good for my body.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's important to recognize. But I also think that mindful eating has a huge element here because take the Twistis for example, say I had ten clients that were like, I love Twistis. If I truly got them to sit down and eat it mindfully and actually taste it, I would say nine out of ten of those people would actually turn away and go, you know what, They weren't actually as good as what
they thought in their head. It feels like such a treat, but when you sit down and you truly savor and enjoy that food and eat it mindfully. What is a twisty It's just a dry flavor, cheese tasting thing at the end of the day.
Now that's fast food as well. That's fast food. It doesn't even taste good exactly.
So I think mindful eating has a huge element to play here, And I think a lot of us aren't eating treats mindfully. We're not really tasting them. The idea of them is far more satisfying than the actual eating element of that treat. So even though I'm saying that yes, if that's something that you love, absolutely, I allow my
clients to have it. At the end of the day, most of them turn around to me after we've gone through what is mindful eating, we've practiced it a few times, A lot of them turn around to me, Susie and go, I don't need that sol food on my list anymore. Like a lot of clients, the list of self foods that they send me when they first start working with me is very different to the list of soult foods they send me the end, once they've gone through a
lot of the practices of mindful eating. So I think that that mindful eating element has a huge component here, But I hear what you're saying. I agree. I think that we're putting far more of this ultra process food into our body than we need to. But I think we actually need to just start tasting our food and recognizing is that something that I truly love? Is this actually a treat for me? Or do I think it's
more of a treat that it actually tastes like? Does it actually taste like something that's incredible, amazing, like a fine cuisine type meal, or is it something I'm just shoveling in because I'm stressed and I'm sad, and I've had a bad day and I'm looking to treat myself in that way. Is it more of a treat in my head? Or is it actual treat to my palette? Because I think so many of these things aren't actually as good at tasting as what we think they are on our head.
Very true, good summary.
All right, Well, moving on to our listener question of the week, we talk about salt Susie. So, the guidelines in Australia, and I imagine they're very similar around the world. Ustralian and New Zealand governments actually recommend that healthy adults eat no more than two thousand milligrams of sodium per day. You think, oh, two thousand milligrams. That sounds like so much, But oh my goodness, Susie, let's break it down because it's really not that much. It's about it's about a
teaspoon of salt altogether. Isn't it like, it's not really that much at all.
No, it's not much.
And I think the things that stand out to me and why I wanted to discuss it, because this was question that came through on the podcast Instagram, was there's kind of middle ground, you know, in terms of foods that say have four six hundred eight hundred if it's
a process food with a sauce. But then there's a whole whack of meals and foods that have got close to two thousand milligrams per serves in a single meal, So things like presseudo straight away, extremely high bacon sausages, and then any kind of cuisine because chefs just throw so much salt. If you saw how much salt went into your food at a restaurant, it wouldn't surprise you what tastes so good.
They just have buckets of it.
So any fast food meal Deal's got more than your entire daily requirement, as does Mexican Guzman and Gomez, tex mex As. Does any Chicken Place KFC, red Rooster, any kind of fast food meal, Burger King macas KFC, They've got like three up to you know, four thousand milligrams of sodium perserve. So it's just good to be aware and you have a quick look on the label. I look for one sort of sort of less than six
hundred milligrams per serve as a rough eye. A low sodium food's got less than three hundred milligrams per serve, So we do need some, but I think as soon as you target those old really high foods. Another really high one lean is two minute noodles. The sachet has got more than almost two thousand milligrams per serve, which is why it's not a great snack for kids. So that's kind of the handful of foods that come up as being mega high. So just be careful of prosudo
if you selt sensitive going into the holidays. Smoke salmon's kind of middle ground in terms of amounts. It's higher than say fresh salmon, of course, but it's yeah, the process meets the fast food meals.
The two minute noodle.
Sachets are particularly high, coming in at that two thousand per serve. And I recently reviewed like a pre made meal in a pouch, but I couldn't endorse it because it was over one thousand milligrams per serve. So as soon as any process foods over one thousand, I put it back down.
It's way too high.
So just good to be aware, particularly if you do have high blood pressure and you're mindful of sodium, because yeah, over time, Australians have about two and a half times the recommended intake per day of sodium, so we have huge amounts and there's some food it's just to be mindful of.
But yeah, less in the supermarket.
Definitely less than a thousand milligrams per serve and sort of around six Hundred's a pretty good amount if you're having a processed food. Oh, I know, Land soy sauce.
Yeah, any Asian type cuisine.
HOistin fish sauce, any Asian sauce. That's why when I'm cooking Asian cuisine at home, I only ever use one sauce. I never combined too, because it just bumps it up so much and I get salt reduced soy too can help reduce it.
That's a good one. Yeah, because a typical tablespan of normal soy sauce is about eight hundred milligrams, are low salt soy sauces around sort of five to six hundred, So it definitely makes it dend. I must say I'm not overly concerned about salt for my healthy adult clients. Obviously, if they've got issues with blood pressure or heart disease, and obviously I'm more concerned. But for my healthy guys who just want to kind of optimize god health lose
a bit of weight, I'm not overly concerned. But like you said, there are some heavy hitters out there, Like I just googled a typical big mac meal, Like we're talking nearly fifteen hundred milligrams of sodium between the burger and the fries. Pre made soups on the market, the better ones are six hundred milligrams. The higher ones are on thy twelve hundred grams a day, and when you think the whole amount for the day is only two
thousand milligrams. Anything that comes in a packet, whether it's a cereal, a bread, a sauce, it's going to have added sodium in it, even if you can't taste it.
And there's a reason why I always say to my clients if they ever go out for a meal, even if it's a healthy type meal, like we might go and have some I don't know, like a Vietnamese rice chicken salad bowl or something, but because they use the fish sauce and the soy sauces flavor, always said to my clients, whatever you do, do not jump on the scale the next day after you have a meal out, because it will be an inflated number on the scale
because the sodium retains water in your body. And David and I just had dumplings last night, Susie, you've got us hooked on dumplings. And I added a bit of soy in my stir fried greens and I couldn't get my wedding ring on this morning. I was like, oh my goodness. So whenever you're feeling a little bit puffy, or your rings aren't fitting properly, or your face is a bit puffy, it's probably due to the excess amount
of sodium. So there's definitely some heavy hitters. But reading those labels are really really needed when you're going through the supermarket products because when you think about two thousand milligrams a day, even if you don't add salt to your meals, you know, even if you're not cracking the salt on top of your here let lunch or dinner, you're still getting in a large amount through a lot of the packaged products, and a lot of things people
don't really realize. Breads, cereals, sauces, pre made meals, heat up meals. I love some of those preheat soup options sous you. Particularly just after we had Tilly a couple of months ago. It was winter, it was quite cool, and we're using a lot of those sort of heat up meals soups during winter for our lunches as well,
just because neither of us had time to cook. So you've just got to be a little bit aware of that, and particularly if your goal is weight loss, knowing that sodium does impact the scale because it kind of acts like a sponge. It helps to retain water in your body. So if you've had a huge, heavily high salt type of meal, you are probably going to weigh a little bit heavier on the scale the next day. It does tend to influence scale wait quite a bit as well.
It doesn't.
I just I know for sort of healthy, active people, and even I don't pay a huge amount of attention to salt. But I certainly with my females in their forties and fifties who have any kind of pro inflammatory disorder or joint pain, I would really pay attention to your sodium because it will have a massive impact on reducing inflammation and puffiness in your body and you will
feel much better. So if you're one of those people who have joint pain, you know you're inflamed, certainly you're the group who I would be paying a bit more attention to it. And another buffer for that is some beech stroot juice. It's a very nice buffer for sodium in the diet, So a little bit of that in the morning. But yes, for that group of people, I'd be a bit more salt aware because you'll notice a lot less joint pain if you keep the salt in the fluid load down in your diet.
Wonderful. All right, Well, that brings us to the end of the nutrition couch potty for another Sunday, don't forget to check out our website. We've got our two webinars that we recently did, Hack Your Hormones and y Weight, which is all about the psychology and wait Less. They're available at the nutritioncouch dot com under the shop page. And we will catch you guys next week for our midweek motivational episode.
Have a great week.