Big mistake was made by me last night. For lunch today, I just had a
couple of Hillshire Farm Bratwurst(smoked). The level of sodium in
there just freaked me out. Why all the sodium?
I've been around sausage making since I was a baby, and we never
sodiumed the sausage like these commercials do. We didn't even use
any of the Prague cures(sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate).
We never had any problems as far as spoilage went. The fresh sausage
was pretty well eaten up on the night of the butchering(usually quite
a few people around), and that which was left over was frozen. The
other sausage went into a homebuilt smoker and cold smoked. All this
sodium isn't neccessary. I suppose people really love their sodium.
Here are the ingredients of this sausage:

1. Pork
2. Water
3. Beef
4. Corn Syrup
5. Contains 2% or less of salt
6. Sodium lactate
7. Isolated soy product
8. Dextrose
9. Isolated soy protein
10. Monosodium Glutamate
11. Sodium Diacetate
12. Ascorbic acid
13. Natural Flavours(and what might those be?)
14. Natural Spice
15. Lemon juice powder
16. (Corn syrup solids, lemon juice solids, lemon oil)
17. Smoke
18. Sodium nitrite
19. Contains soy.
They didn't taste smokey at all.