Sodium tools and practical guidance

Understand the sodium in your food

Avoid Salt helps you calculate sodium from food labels, portions, meals and recipes. You can track a day, compare foods, inspect ingredient lists and understand how the numbers fit together.

Sodium is an essential mineral, so the goal is not to eliminate it completely. General public-health references can put food-label numbers in context, but they are not personal medical targets.

Track a day of sodium View all tools

Choose the task you need to complete

Start with a food label, a meal, a recipe or a running daily total. The tools use the numbers you enter and keep the calculation transparent.

Sodium Day TrackerAdd foods through the day, see the running total and identify the largest contributors.Meal Sodium CalculatorTotal several foods and see how much each item contributes.Recipe Sodium CalculatorAdd ingredients and estimate sodium for the whole recipe and each finished serving.Nutrition Label Sodium CalculatorCalculate sodium for the servings or whole package you actually eat.Sodium Percentage & Reference CalculatorConvert between milligrams and FDA, WHO or custom reference percentages.Hidden Sodium Ingredient FinderPaste an ingredient list and identify recognized sodium-containing ingredients.

Salt and sodium are related, but different

Table salt is sodium chloride. Nutrition Facts labels list sodium because sodium can come from salt and other sodium-containing ingredients.

Read the sodium and salt explanation

Cooking changes the calculation

A recipe can combine sodium from packaged ingredients, broth, sauces, seasonings and added salt. Dividing the finished dish into servings turns the recipe total into a useful per-serving estimate.

Calculate sodium in a recipe