Salt

I’m on a flight to Texas and the beverage cart arrives. Scanning the sweet juice options I decide to go healthy. “Tomato juice,” I request. They have none, but the flight attendant suggests “Bloody Mary”, which is “like tomato juice” with a “more spicy flavor.” While the title sounds weird, the idea of spicy tomato juice sounds good. The zip and zing feel good on my tongue and I sip in the pride of good health. Than I take a look at the ingredients. Seventy calories. Yeah! Next I notice 1480 mg of salt. I blink and look again. Not a focal problem or blurred vision. It really is 1480 mg of salt, making up 62% of the salt for the day. I move the can away from me as if it is dangerous. It is. Curiosity gets the better of me, so I pick up the can again. Where within the ingredients does salt come, I wonder. The first three ingredients are: vinegar, high fructose corn syrup and sea salt. Next comes salt. Out of the first four ingredients, salt is two of them, and the other two are not any better. I look diligently for the tomato juice or vegetable juice ingredient. None. Apparently the color comes from paprika and molasses. The undrunk drink sits beside me as I write this blog. In the name of health I am drinking (was drinking) the most unhealthy drink on the cart. A little 7-up would have been better. Water would have been the choice of the day.

Much of what we take into our bodies and minds cause us harm at undetectable levels. A little sugar here, a little carbohydrate there, and suddenly we find ourselves in a whole population of people who are overweight and struggling with Type II Diabetes, a disease attributed to the older population when I was in nursing school. Now our children begin life with it.

This reminds me of a recent visit to the cosmetic counter. I was lured there by the giveaways. Professional ladies in white coats stood ready to transform the passing woman.
“What you need is volume and lift,” the kind lady says to me.
“Where?” Generally, volume and lift do not occur in the same sentence as one recommendation.
“Right here in your eye lashes.” She leans close.
“Ummm, I’m afraid the ‘volume and lift’ will irritate my eyes. Can we try something else?”
She brings a tube of lip moisturizer. “This adds vitamins to your lips and erases the fine lines.”
“There are fine lines in my lips?! “ I hadn’t realized. I ask to see the ingredients. Being a closet chemist, one of my hobbies is making lotions in my kitchen. Knowing ingredients is my pastime. I do not want to be rude, and I really DO want to be transformed, but the ingredient, petroleum, jumps out at me from the tube and I push her hand away. Some ingredients are only slightly bad and I use them once in awhile. Petroleum is not in that category. It is on my “Never” list. “Do you have just simple lotions for the face?”
“Oh yes, follow me.” She takes me to a counter with a number of tubes and jars of various colors. Pointing to the jars on the left and then moving to the right, she states, “These are for fine lines and surface wrinkles, these are for those with deeper wrinkles, and this third group is for aged skin with deep age-related wrinkles.”
Seeing myself as someone with good skin (certainly my homemade lotions and potions make a difference), I ask, “And which one of the three do you recommend for me?
“Oh, these here on the far right for deep age-related wrinkles.”
Now I’m upset. “Where do the women go who have tons of wrinkles?! Who uses the products down there on the left – the ones for fine lines and surface wrinkles?”
The lady in the white coat is sure of herself. “I recommend that line for women in their twenties.”
“Twenties! Women in their twenties have lines and wrinkles?! Where does a woman go next when she is at the high end of the lotions-for-wrinkles line and she is not even “old” yet!” I can tolerate the injustice no longer. Leaving the freebies and giveaways behind (which really only come with a large purchase), I excuse myself and head for the door, empty-handed. I have come in and out of Nordstrom and bought nothing. It is a great feeling. My thoughts return to the present.
The flight attendant has come and removed the still undrunk “tomato juice.” I have escaped the salt hijack along with the petroleum lip balm and wrinkle reliever of yesterday, but only narrowly. It could have so easily gone the other direction and I would not have known any immediate difference.
Much of life takes place in the little decisions – reading a label, asking “why” or “why not.” We think “this one time won’t matter,” but it does because “this one time” becomes another and another. We live our lives in patterned ways. One decision makes the next one a lot easier. Eventually, we don’t have to think at all. This is the power of “this one time.”

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