Vegetarian Food and Nutrition

Know About Chloride Recommended Intake & Vegetarian Dietary Sources

Chloride is one essential as well as a major mineral that works with potassium and sodium to keep our body fluid levels balanced. It works by maintaining the fluid volume outside of the cells. Most importantly, the cells in the lining of your stomach need chloride to make hydrochloric acid, which is a component of your digestive juices.

Well, its deficiency is rare as it is very easy to find chloride in foods. Still, sometimes people don’t understand its importance and avoid it due to their taste or their choice. That is not it some of the medical issues can also lead to a lack of chloride in the body.

So, let’s begin to learn its importance in our diet and then also learn which vegetarian foods can be taken for adding chloride in diet.

Its Function in Body

To keep the proper balance of body fluids, Chloride is needed. Plus, it is a vital part of the digestive (stomach) juices.

Side Effects of Not Having Enough Quantity

When your body loses a lot of fluids, too little chloride in the body can occur. For example, due to vomiting, heavy sweating, or diarrhea, it may happen. Also, few medicines like diuretics can cause low chloride levels.

Moreover, too much of sodium-chloride from salted foods can either increase your blood pressure or can also cause a buildup of fluid in people with kidney disease, congestive heart failure, or cirrhosis.

Chloride Recommended Intake

In the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) developed by the Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine, Dosages for chloride, as well as other nutrients, are provided. To plan and assess the nutrient intakes of healthy people, DRI is a term for a set of reference intakes that are used. Well, such values, which vary by gender and age, include:

A. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA)

It signifies what is the average daily level of intake to meet the nutrient needs of nearly all (97% to 98%), healthy people. In simple words, based on scientific research evidence, an RDA is an intake level.

B. Adequate Intake (AI)

When there is not enough scientific research evidence to develop an RDA, this level is established. This could be considered as a mark to ensure enough nutrition.

Infants (AI)

0.18 grams per day (g/day) for infants of age 0 to 6 months old
0.57 g/day is needed for infants of age 7 to 12 months old

Children (AI)

1.5 g/day for 1 to 3 years olds
1.9 g/day for 4 to 8 years old
2.3 g/day for 9 to 13 years old

Adolescents and adults (AI)

2.3 g/day for both males and females of age 14 to 50 years old
2.0 g/day for both males and females of age 51 to 70 years old
1.8 g/day for both males and females of age 71 and over

For women who are pregnant and lactating, of any age, 2.3 g/day is needed.

Vegetarian Food Sources

It is possible to take an adequate amount of Chloride via table salt or sea salt as sodium chloride. Besides, many of the vegetables also contain chloride.

However, many reports suggested that most of the Americans probably get more chloride content than they need from table salt and the salt in prepared foods.

Foods with higher amounts of chloride include seaweed, olives, tomatoes, rye, celery, lettuce, and olives.

More specifically:

1. Tomatoes

The content of chloride in tomatoes is high. Due to the presence of high amounts of lycopene (a naturally occurring pigment), there is a reduced risk of heart disease with this fruit.

2. Olives

One can find this small tree, the olive, primarily in the Mediterranean region and parts of China & Europe. It is possible to extract olive oil from the fruit of this tree, which can be used in many culinary preparations.

3. Seaweeds

Dulse and kelp, which are seawater-dwelling marine plants (algae), contain a good amount of chlorine.

4. Rye

 A grain grass related to the wheat and barley family is what we call Rye. It is generally used to prepare alcoholic beverages like beer, whiskey, and vodka. Moreover, to make rye bread, rye flour is used.

Final Words

It is a must say that sea salt and table salt are both 40 percent chloride by volume so every time you add salt to your foods or eat foods that are made with salt, you'll consume chloride.

That means the foods you eat are more than sufficient. Here there's no general reason to take chloride as a dietary supplement.

Still, if the doctor recommends you to eat products highly containing chloride, you can try all the above mentioned.

Hope it Helps!

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