Swallow Soup or Swallow Sodium?

Excessive sodium intake can cause edema, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, kidney and coronary heart disease.

People like food at convenience store for expediency. Easy to taste in a stick, Japanese oden is within choices. Sometimes people add oden soup. However, people hardly know high sodium level hides just in the soup. Actually,the average bowl of soup — 80 percent full —contains between 600mg and 1,400mg of salt. The significant variance arises from clerks adjusting soup flavor following individual palette, continuously heating but not adding water periodically.

To know consumers’ view about sodium level of oden soup, 98 people conducted online survey. 94 out of 98 have eaten oden of convenience stores. 37 would add half bowl of soup and 36 add over eighty percent full. After showing them the sodium variance of oden soup and possible disease as lavish sodium intake, 73 people chose to continue purchasing oden and add reasonable soup.

Except consumers’ aspects, clerks working at convenience stores are also interviewed. They mentioned there is a device for testing the salinity of the oden soup and the official procedures to dilute soup is a pack of condensed soup powder with 1500cc water and pressing the heating button whenever adding water inside. As for the timing to add water depends on clerks free or not and the amount of water inside the soup.

Concerning the sodium variance of oden soup, consumers seem to react rationally according to the survey. Although relevant non-profit organizations may pay attention to health issues for us, it is everyone’s duty to take care of individual health and also other’s when working in service industry.

The online survey

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