My Bland Soup Experiment Today I talk about how I went to purchased a 2 Quart Slow Cooker ($8) and was amazed at how much SALT is in the "ready made" seasoning mixes for slow cookers. So I decided to make my own. I purchased some stew meat, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and some no sodium beef broth (that still have 79 mg of salt). I browned the meat, and through everything together and went to visit my brother. I came home and everything was done, but it was pretty bland. The good new is I could add salt to taste instead of having 900 mg of salt that I didn't ask for.  It turns out that 2000 mg of salt is a teaspoon. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend an upper limit for sodium consumption of 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day for adults. If you are African American, age 51 or older or have high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic disease, that recommendation is lowered to 1,500 milligrams per day. The good news is I tried something new. I learned some insights, and thanks to the internet I'm sure there are plenty of health slow cooker recipes for me to try me to try. I do love set it and forget it cooking (with very little clean up as well).  Probiotics - Do We Need These? My answer is I don't know. I get that your "Gut" has enzymes that help keep us healthy, and some of our food kills the good enzymes. In looking at some Probiotic Complex, there was a video that states that a study in england more or less dismissed them as necessary unless you have diarrhea or have IBS. Fooducate - Not Only Says a Food is Bad, but WHY I've used other apps to help share some insights into what foods are good and which ones are bad, but they were totally free. I am always worried they are being paid by companies to spotlight their food as a healthy choice. Fooducate has additional "pro" versions so you don't have to about that (their prices are very reasonable for bonus features, and their free features are great). I love that they tell you why something is getting a less than steller grade. I love in some cases, they throw in some good old honest SNARKINESS. It's pretty entertaining.  One of my favorite features is you can log your food (including the ability to scan a bar code - I love that) your water, sleep, and activity and it gives you a grade for the day. I would love to see it integrate with fitbit so I wouldn't have to log my information twice.  Check it at out at fooducate.com (available for both iOs and Android). The food tracking is only in the app, you can do food lookup on their website.