The other day, I was delighted to find oil-free hummus at Sprouts! This hummus is so tasty that I can easily eat an entire package with Ezekiel 4:9 bread in a single meal :)

How many calorie in 1 package? 200 calories (the package has 8 servings; each serving is 25 calories).

Is it okay to eat an entire package of this hummus in a single meal? Yeah. 200 calories from beans on a 2,000 calorie diet is okay. Dr Greger encourages 3 servings of beans in his Daily Dozen, where 1 Daily-Dozen-serving of beans is

• ¼ cup of hummus or bean dip, or
• ½ cup of cooked beans, split peas, lentils, tofu or tempeh, or
• 1 cup of fresh peas or sprouted lentils

An entire package of Cedar's Fat & Oil-Free Hummus equals 4 Daily-Dozen servings of beans.

What about sodium??!! One package of this hummus has 8 * 105 (5% DV) = 840 mg (40% DV), which is surprisingly large!

What did I learn? We must be careful with processed foods even if the ingredient list looks WFPB compliant.

In Oct '22, I found Low Sodium soy sauce at Trader Joe's. In merely 1 tbsp, it has 530 mg sodium! Sodium guidelines by AHA (American Heart Association): "An ideal limit of no more than 1,500 mg per day for most adults."

An oil-free, sugar-free bread (Whole Food Plant-Based) but 1 slice has 350mg sodium! Many of us may be surprised to find that a sweet preparation like bread has salt as an ingredient — it makes the bread tasty.

Sodium is found naturally in plant foods.

Why do we add sodium to sweet foods? Because it makes them tasty! Remember, all of these are addictive: animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy), salt, oil and sugar!

We should really minimize our added sodium intake. Let's not add salt to preparations where we don't need salt at all! Sweet preparations like morning breakfast and sweet desserts don't need any added sodium.