What is Low Sodium?

I recently was looking at a food label for something. The sodium level for the serving was 400 mg, 17% DV. I realized I really had no idea what these numbers meant. Were they low? high? Had I already consumed any sodium that day?

I finally stumbled upon an answer today.

According to the American Heart Association (by way of the US Dept of Agriculture, and a few other resources like the CDC, too), Americans consume 3,436 mg of sodium on average daily; that's well over the recommended 1500mg milligrams. It seems most of that comes from highly processed foods, but could also include addition of table salt to meals as well as ordering food/take out.

So, a low sodium serving is considered to be 5% DV or less OR less than 140 mg per serving. So the next time I'm checking nutrition labels at the grocery store, I'll pay close attention to this one!