For the gadget geek or health-obsessed yoga fanatic in your household, here is an all-occasion gift that keeps on giving: a personal handheld sodium monitor.
It’s a known fact that Korean food is high in sodium, and that single ingredient can outweigh the otherwise healthful aspects of the motherland’s pungent delights.
To the rescue: a gadget that measures the sodium level of your food. Inexpensive and compact enough for your purse or back pocket, the slim sensor gives you on-the-spot analysis of your food’s salinity level.
The World Health Organization recommends a daily intake of sodium no higher than 5,000 mg per day. Koreans consume on average more than 13,000 mg a day! However, U.S. health guidelines recommend even less sodium – a range of 1,500 and 2,400 mg daily – for healthy adults.
I think one of my arteries just exploded.
In addition to the nasty health hazards of a high-sodium diet, we all can relate to those salt-hangovers when we wake up with marshmallow face after a late-night feeding of ramen.
But does knowing that your favorite chigae punches in at 2,000 mg of sodium make you slurp less of it? Will you think twice before ordering it the next time?
And can you return food in a Korean restaurant? I’m guessing you can get away with it in the U.S., but I’d like to see someone try to do that in Seoul. My guess is you still will be able to avoid consuming your salty soup because it will end up in your lap.
