Wikipedia lists the mass of sodium ascorbate as 198.11, because the chemical formula listed there has only one sodium. I thought that both of the active sites have the OH replaced by Na, but according to the above, this only happens in one of them. What's the truth here?
The answer to this is significant in three ways I can think of:
1) For people worried about sodium intake, it makes a difference in the calculation for people taking large amounts of sodium ascorbate (see point 3 below). Although Dr. Levy says the problem is really that of sodium chloride, there may be sensitive people who retain water and raise blood pressure on sodium ascorbate also
2) If there is only one sodium, that means there is still an OH group to release an H+ ion, so there is still some acidity in the sodium ascorbate, and it is not "non-acidic vitamin C" but only "relatively acidic.
3) It changes the calculation of exactly how much vitamin C is actually taken. if there is one sodium, so 12% of the total weight is sodium, while of there are 2 sodiums, the sodium is 21% of the weight.
Any help with this is appreciated.