Planning Meals with Heart-Healthy Sodium Levels

Almost every processed food item in the grocery store is loaded with sodium. Even many items marked "reduced sodium" are still way too high to use and stay under 2000 mg/day.

This requirement means that many items now have to be prepared from scratch. In some cases this is time-consuming. For example, Reduced sodium chicken broth (commonly used in low sodium diets to improve flavor) is reduced to between 500 and 600 mg/ cup, depending on the brand. This is still a huge amount of sodium! Chicken broth with no added sodium cannot usually be purchased, so making your own which will include only the sodium which occurs naturally in low levels in raw chicken may be required.

Another common ingredient that is easy to make at home is pureed tomato for use in any tomato-based recipe. Cook the tomatoes down with some onion, celery, paprika, and a bay leaf. When the liquid is significantly reduced, remove the bay leaf, process in a blender, and then freeze or can the puree.

However, lots of recipes can just have the salt left out, or drastically reduced. But if you are cooking with things from the store like mushroom soup, tomato soup, tomato sauce, or canned vegetables (even some frozen ones), you will have trouble. Condiments are always a problem: ketchup, mustard, pickles, olives, etc... check the labels and beware.

Frozen chicken, and virtually all turkey unless it is organic has been injected with "flavor enhancers," which add huge amounts of sodium. Buy fresh chicken, straight from the farm if possible. You may have to search harder to find turkey which is not artificially pumped full of salt.

Look for breads in the store with lowered sodium. You can make biscuits from scratch easily, and even leave out the salt. (Don't use a biscuit mix though; it already has the salt in it). You can make these even healthier, by substituting some whole-grain flour for part of the white flour. Experiment to see how much your family likes.

There are lots more choice available than there used to be to add flavor to foods at the table. Many spice mixtures under various brand names, and salt substitutes in shakers can be purchased.

Finally, don't despair. If you just can't stand to eat something without barbeque sauce, give yourself a small break. Portion control is the phrase to chant like a mantra! The bottles of barbeque sauce in my refrigerator range from 250 to 370 mg/sodium in a 2 tablespoon serving. OK, so that is over 10% of the daily allowance. But if it makes the meal palatable, go ahead.... but, make sure you measure those 2 T and stick to that portion. Then just be careful to keep other items on the day's menu low in sodium.

Nutrition Data provides standard food label values plus dozens of other values for virtually any food, including some name brand prepared foods

USDA Food Pyramid