What's with all the sodium? The first days of mass production alternatives

I ventured out on that first weekend and did some grocery shopping alone in order to take a close look at some alternatives to mass production meat and I found out that almost everything on offer is high in sodium. Veggie dogs (which Kaitlyn loves) and soy cheese are loaded with salt, while milk alternatives are only slightly less offensive. I realize that the choices I made are in some cases just the vegetarian equivalent of regular high sodium junk food, but not all. How do vegetarians balance their non-meat alternatives with a low-sodium diet?

Speaking of sodium, one of my new choices is to use veggie broth in soups instead of chicken. A quick comparison of the PC Organics brand and the Campbell's Organic veggie broths, which I unfortunately neglected to do at the store, shows me that the PC brand has twice as much sodium per serving. It also contains tomato paste so that means there's sugar in there, too. The photo on the front shows an inviting clear-yellow broth while the actual product is brownish-red. Yuck, I won't make that mistake again!

Do vegetables really taste so bad to the average consumer that everything has to be salted down? Or is it just what we have available at our store? Apparently soy products are also highly modified so they're not popular with a lot of folks. This venture of ours is turning into a lot of research, it's almost like learning how to eat all over again.

I'll also mention that our first couple of weeks have not been all veggie. We've had deer and, since I'm not about to waste money throwing out everything we had in the freezer, we've also had some chicken. At this point, it's something to explore and be conscious of when we make our meal choices. But it's hard and we need to keep being reminded. When I told Keith that I was craving salami, he asked "what animal is that?" That didn't help my hangry but I'll forgive him because he's so supportive.