Appetizing Ways to Reduce Your Sodium

Good News! You can reduce your sodium without sacrificing taste. After all, that is what sodium use is all about: improving the taste of food. Here are some tips to help you do it deliciously.

1. ...Choose a flavorful dish and go saltless....here's a winner! Cook a mixture of your favorite shellfish (shrimp, clams, crab legs, mussels etc.) in-shell. Cooking shellfish in the shell-with seasonings-is heavenly!

2. Cook your food a day in advance (roasts, spaghetti, homemade soups and stews etc.). Seasoned well, the food will taste even better the second day.

3. Use a salt-less marinade on your meats. It'll boost the flavor so you'll use less salt. Be conscientious to use less salt! Spiceandtease.com has ready-mix pure spice blends designed for specific foods (veal, fish, potato, beef, white meat, poultry...).

4. Don't salt all the food on your plate. Exclude a side dish. That way you cut your salt and can save the "best" food for last (or first).

5. Use sea salt. It has 10% less salt (sodium) than table salt. Check out saltworks.us they have a gourmet selection of salts and appeared on the "O" list of favorites.

6. Ask your doctor about Morton's Lite Salt. It is a blend of sodium, potassium chloride and iodide. It has 50% less salt than regular salt at 290 mg per teaspoon (versus 590mg per teaspoon). This can be another option for those who are healthy and not on a sodium or potassium restricted diet.

7. Drink your vegetables. When you drink your vegetables you exclude the salt. Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness is a particularly healthy, delicious choice! It contains vitamins, minerals, and hard-to-come-by phytonutrients such as spirulina, open cell chlorella, blue green algae and echinacea-it's all good! And try Green Machine from Naked Juice. Find these juices in the refrigerated produce section near the salads.

7. Portion control: If you must add table salt, cut back on the total amount of salted food you normally eat.

8. Instead of adding water to dishes try substituting a sodium free, natural broth. HerbOx makes "Sodium Free" broth cubes which lists "0mg" sodium. However, it contains disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. HerbOx says,"...disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are water soluble flavor enhancer's [sic] derived from seaweed and fish."

9. BBQ it. Meat, poultry and fish seasoned with herbs and spices really shine when barbecued. See #3.

10. As I think of more options, I'll continually update this list.