This salad and side dish staple could be spiking your sodium
Halloumi is a salty, chewy cheese that’s mouth-watering when grilled, seared, baked or fried – but it comes with a risk.
The staple in salads and Mediterranean side dishes could be sneakily raising your blood pressure, according to experts. That’s because of the cheese’s high sodium content.
“One ounce of halloumi cheese provides 90 calories, seven grams of total fat, four grams of saturated fat, six grams of protein, and 669 milligrams of sodium, which is 28 percent of the recommended daily maximum, registered dietitian Toby Amidor recently told Parade.
That’s around the same amount of sodium you get from eating a slice of pizza.
What’s the damage?
Eating excess sodium leads to an increase in how much blood has to move through the blood vessels that connect to the heart, as well as shrinks those vessels.
The result is strain on your heart within just 30 minutes, according to the American Heart Association.
Still, most Americans consume more sodium than they should.
The recommended daily amount is 2,300 milligrams, but the average American consumes 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day. That’s the equivalent of about one and a half teaspoons of salt per day, Harvard Medical School notes.
As a result of that and other factors, nearly half of all American adults live with high blood pressure.
The cost of salt
High blood pressure puts people at a greater risk for life-threatening cardiac events, such as stroke and a heart attack.
Nearly 800,000 Americans suffer a stroke each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and one in six deaths from heart disease were due to stroke in 2022 in the U.S.
Approximately 805,000 people have a heart attack in the U.S. annually, and there are more than 919,000 deaths related to cardiovascular disease each year.
So, what’s a halloumi-obsessed foodie to do?
Well, in small quantities, the cheese isn’t actually that bad for you.
“On most packs of halloumi, the recommended serving size is only 30 grams (so is the nutritional value), which is good to bear in mind when cooking,” Ellie Bain, Gousto’s registered nutritionist and dietician, told Men’s Health.
A serving of 30 grams has 330 milligrams of sodium, according to the American University of Beirut Medical Center.
Made of sheep’s and goat’s milk, halloumi contains critical nutrients such as protein and 20 percent of the daily recommended amount of calcium in an ounce, said Amidor.
It has zinc and vitamin A, as well, which both have immune health benefits. Vitamin A is crucial for vision and zinc helps the immune system.
