Breakfast had satiated my hunger until about 2:30pm. While the oatmeal was far from a culinary delight, it was leagues ahead of the approaching midday meal.
For lunch, I had purchased cans of condensed chicken noodle soup. Two cans of soup would have been overkill at this point, so I stuck with a single can. According to the label, a single can of the soup contains 2.5 servings. A single serving may be been an appropriate portion when the consumer has a side dish of some kind, but a paltry $3.25 food budget left me with no such luxury. I cracked open the can intent upon devouring every ounce of the bright yellow substance flecked with chicken bits.
Again, the trusty microwave was the utility of choice for my culinary disaster. The soup was lacking vegetables or any noticeable spices, but this is expected of an item costing less than 50 cents. Unfortunately, the soup’s budget price proved to be indicative of its overall taste. After mixing the can’s content with water and a mere four minutes of heating, the meal was ready to be eaten and subsequently criticized.
In short, the soup was salty. In fact, the broth was salted in such a manner that it was nearly inedible. The sodium-laced entrée sucked every ounce of moisture from my mouth. Before I surrendered my spoon to the soup’s infinite saltiness, I had already consumed two large glasses of water. At this point, I had not yet analyzed the actual sodium content of the meal, but my dry mouth argued in favor of a substantial figure.
The can’s label confirmed my suspicions. Each serving contained 900 milligrams of sodium. Having consumed almost an entire can of the soup, my lunch was home to 2.25 grams of sodium. To put this figure in context, the American Heart Association recommends a daily intake of less than 2.3 grams of sodium for “healthy Americans”. In one meal, I had consumed a full day’s worth of sodium.
To make matters worse, the entire can contained only 170 calories. With two meals down, I had only consumed 470 calories. According to the Dallas Dietetic Association Calorie Calculator (A link from FDA.gov), I man of my height, weight, age and activity level should consume roughly 3,200 calories daily. After consuming less than 15 percent of my recommended calorie intake, I had only one meal to remaining.
