A 7-Day Low-Sodium Meal Plan
General guidance, not medical advice. Sodium limits are individual — blood pressure, heart and kidney conditions each change the target — so use the daily number your care team gives you. Full disclaimer.
Sodium is the number nobody can see. It isn’t the salt shaker — it’s the bread, the cheese, the sauce, the deli meat — and because it’s invisible, most people trying to cut back have no idea whether a day landed at 1,500 mg or 4,000. You can’t steer by a number you never get to look at.
This guide is a complete 7-day example week built from real recipes in the Plate Planner library, with the sodium number printed on every meal. Every dish below lands under 500 mg of sodium per serving, and each day is totalled so you can see the week holding under a daily cap. Tap any dish for its full ingredients, method and complete nutrition.
Sodium (Na) is a per-serving estimate from each recipe’s nutrition panel — steer by the daily totals, where estimate error washes out. Tap any dish for the full recipe and complete nutrition.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Sodium values here are per-serving estimates from each recipe’s nutrition panel — good enough to steer a week by, not lab measurements. That’s why the useful number is the daily total under each day, where estimate error washes out across three meals, rather than any single dish’s figure.
The commonly cited ideal for people watching blood pressure is 1,500 mg a day; general dietary guidance uses 2,300 mg. This week is built to hold near the stricter figure — but the right cap for you depends on your blood pressure, conditions and medications, so treat these as illustrations and use your care team’s number.
Roughly 70% of dietary sodium arrives in processed and restaurant food before you ever pick up a salt shaker — which means a week of home-cooked meals like this one is already the single biggest intervention available. The recipes do the rest by seasoning with acid, herbs, garlic and heat instead of leaning on salt.
Learn the handful of heavy hitters: cured and deli meats, hard cheeses, canned soups and stocks, soy and fish sauces, pickles and bread — ordinary sandwich bread alone can carry 200 mg a slice. Rinsing canned beans and vegetables removes a meaningful share of their added sodium; low-sodium stock and soy sauce halve two of the biggest kitchen sources outright.
Give your palate the two weeks it needs. Taste recalibrates faster than habits do — after a fortnight at lower sodium, restaurant food starts tasting as salty as it actually is, and staying under the cap stops feeling like restraint.
In the planner, set a daily sodium cap — 1,500 mg is a built-in preset, or enter your care team’s number. Every meal and day then shows its sodium against the cap, meals that blow the budget get flagged, and a one-tap swap rewrites any offender into a lower-sodium version. Free, no account needed to start.
No. It’s an example week built from recipes with per-serving sodium estimates shown — organizational help, not medical advice. Blood-pressure and cardiovascular management belong with your doctor, including your daily sodium target.
A simple bar: under 500 mg of sodium per serving, based on each recipe’s per-serving nutrition estimate — with the number printed on the dish rather than hidden. Three meals under that bar is what keeps a full day near the 1,500 mg cap.
It’s the commonly cited ideal for people managing blood pressure, and the planner’s strictest preset. General guidance uses 2,300 mg, and your own number may differ — conditions and medications move it. Ask your care team, then set the planner’s cap to match.
Usually not by itself: renal diets typically cap potassium and phosphorus too, and those need verified values rather than estimates. The kidney-friendly guide and profile handle all three numbers together — sodium is one leg of that stool.