Meal plans offer convenience and save you from becoming best friends with your microwave. And when you live in the dorms, you’re bound to them like Prometheus to his rock.

Since a lot of people eat at their dining center for breakfast, lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday, the food offered should be as healthy as it can be. But most of it really isn’t.

Many may watch the calories in the dining halls, knowing that sweet and sour chicken is probably better for you than meatloaf. And a salad would usually be better yet.

But the American Medical Association suggests we should also be looking at our salt intake. Sodium is usually listed all the way to the right or down at the bottom on the nutrition facts sheet, so you may not have noticed it. Or maybe you don’t know how much you should have in one day, like you might calories.

The Institute of Medicine says 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day is sufficient to keep the body healthy.

But most Americans eat between 3,300 and 4,000 mg of sodium per day, says the Institute of Medicine.

That’s almost two teaspoons of salt every day.

Too much salt can cause heart disease, strokes and kidney failure. It also leads to high blood pressure, which one in three American adults has, says MSNBC. Of course, if your risk of heart disease is high, you should be particularly concerned.

Those risks may seem far off, and one salty meal won’t kill you, but the way you set your eating habits now will impact you later on. At that point, you might wish you’d just used the low-sodium soy sauce.

I’m not trying to say you should avoid salt. Sodium is an important mineral to the human body. Rutgers Health Services says that muscles and nerves wouldn’t work and “the body would not be able to maintain adequate water and mineral balance” without salt.

However, like most things, it’s when you eat too much that it becomes a problem. And it’s easy to eat too much.

If you ate at the Union Drive Community Center on Nov. 16, you may have had the grilled chicken breast. And you may be shocked to know that it had 1095 mg of salt. That’s almost how much you need in a day. Then if you had cottage cheese, that’s another 460 mg, and the dirt cup would have been another 434 mg. You can see how fast it adds up.

This information is listed for you above the dish itself in the dining halls. A lot of people don’t know about it, since it’s in small print on plain white paper. And most people who do know just don’t take the time to look.

It’s not entirely the food service’s fault the food has so much salt. It takes a lot of packaged food to feed thousands of students.

The Mayo Clinic points out that 77 percent of the sodium we eat is from “processed and prepared foods.”

And even if you don’t eat in the dining centers, you’re probably consuming more salt than you think.

However, those who don’t use the dining halls have a wide choice of food to buy at the local grocery store. They can either buy taco shells or not, carrots or not, based on the nutrition data.

Those who have meal plans have a considerably smaller selection. That’s why the dining halls should take better care to choose foods that are lower in salt along with fat and calories. Not everyone wants to eat a salad for every meal.

You may be thinking or hoping that this is a bunch of baloney, but I’m going to go with the experts on this one.

The American Medical Association says halving the sodium in processed food and restaurant food could save up to 150,000 lives per year.

According to MSNBC, “Public health specialists are pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to require food makers to cut the sodium.”

When that happens, the dining centers will be better able to purchase food that’s lower in sodium. Until then, check to see how much salt you’re consuming every day. You’ll most likely be unpleasantly surprised.

Bailey Lewis is a sophomore in English from Indianola.