The 2000 mg Limit in Real Food

Compare everyday servings against the WHO 2000 mg daily sodium budget and see where a single meal lands.

The WHO recommends that adults consume less than 2000 mg of sodium per day, equivalent to under 5 g of salt or about one teaspoon. To use that number in practice, you need to know how much sodium a typical serving of common foods contributes against it.

Table salt is sodium chloride, and sodium makes up about 40 percent of its mass, so 5 g of salt contains about 2 g of sodium. That conversion is the reference point: one teaspoon of salt, spread across a day of cooking and table use, already fills the budget on its own.

In typical industrialised diets the majority of sodium comes from processed and restaurant food, not from the salt shaker. A single restaurant main course or a serving of cured meat can contribute several hundred milligrams, so the budget is usually spent before anyone reaches for the salt.

Nutrition labels list sodium in milligrams per serving, and the servings per package decide the real total. Use the table below to place a serving in context: compare its milligrams against 2000, and you will see how much room is left for the rest of the day.

An estimated 1.7 million deaths in 2023 were associated with consuming too much sodium, which is why the WHO calls reducing sodium intake one of the most cost-effective measures for improving population health. Small, repeated comparisons against the 2000 mg figure are how that reduction happens at the individual level.

• Under 500 mg per serving: a modest share of the 2000 mg budget.
• 500–1000 mg per serving: a quarter to a half of the day's allowance in one item.
• Over 1000 mg per serving: more than half the budget consumed before the rest of the day's meals.

Further reading

• Read a Label in 30 Seconds
• Swaps That Cut Sodium in Half