TORONTO - A hamburger or stir fry from a chain restaurant may
contain the total daily recommended amount of sodium Canadians
should consume, suggests a study published Wednesday in the
Canadian Journal of Public Health. When it came to stir fries,
some sandwich wraps and even salads, researchers were surprised
at the wide variation in the amount of sodium they contained,
said Mary L'Abbe, chair of the University of Toronto's
department of nutritional sciences and senior author on the
study. "Some of the top quarter of the foods were above the
upper level for a day, but yet the lower end were ... half your
recommendation, so there was this big variety." The daily
recommended amount of sodium is 1,500 milligrams and no more
than 2,300 milligrams — the equivalent of about a teaspoon of
salt — is suggested per day. Research shows the average Canadian
consumes 3,400 milligrams per day. "You would normally think
salad is a very healthy choice and so absolutely a large number
of those salads were quite low in sodium