111013- The heart, diabetic, kidney, and similar dilemma diet

The heart, diabetic, kidney, and similar dilemma diet
When you find you have a health problem, it usually means you need to change your intake of sodium, fat, sugar, or other component. Most people find the new restricted diet hard to attain.

The sodium dilemma

When I was put on a restricted sodium diet I found two issues were in my way:

1. It is hard to find things with low sodium, and
2. I like the taste of salt.

The problem with following a low sodium diet is that almost everything is preserved with salt. It is almost sad, because since it is cooked into the product, you can hardly taste it. The sizzle of salt is gone, but the sodium is present. That means the health hazard is present, and you are not even getting the pleasure of tasting the salt. If you buy a manufactured foods as your main diet, you can pretty much forget staying on a diet of no more than 2,000 mg sodium per day. Even the low sodium packaged foods usually have too much salt in them. They may have gone from 800 mg to 500, but that is not much help. Plus, many people end up with two servings not one, so that 500 mg is really 1,000 mg.

The no-salt added dilemma

I have found that by purchasing "no salt added" groceries, the sodium content in the the foods available in the home went down dramatically. You can then add a modest amount of salt, and still be ahead of the salted version. The problem is that it is easy to overdo it. A shake of salt is often more sodium than you think.

Another problem is that more and more stores are not stocking a no-salt added product, or are limiting them to poor size selections and making them more costly. It was not this way in 2009. I spoke to a store manager about it and they said that self space is limited and the sales of no-salt added were too small. 

The problem is that they are marketing "no-salt added" as a negative. People tend not to like a product that is different from what they think is the normal product. The store and manufacturers need to switch thinking. If they took off the big "no-salt added" notice on the label and stocked it on the top self, and put a "salt added" on the salt added product and placed it on the bottom self, almost no one would buy salt added products. We would have a healthier population, and almost no one would even notice the change. It is not normal or needed to add all the salt that manufacturers add. They do it because that is the way they did it when refrigeration was not an option and salt was the main preservative. That is not needed now. Pasteurization and refrigeration removes the previous need for adding salt to preserve products. But no one is changing how they make the products. They still use 1800's processes. It actually costs them more and reduces their profits.

The home cooked meal dilemma

When you have a health issue, it can be difficult to home cook meals. You may not feel well that day and just not be able to do it, it may take too much time right now, or it requires ingredients that you do not have on hand.

The solution is to make things in bulk when they feel well, and freeze the results in meal sized portions for later use. If they have someone else cooking, they can do this as well which allows a person to have a fast healthy meal instead of a unhealthy but fast manufacturer packaged product.

Most recipe websites do not help

If you try to collect some recipes for a particular diet restrictions, you will find that most sites are not that helpful. There are many reasons for this. Marketing, sales, ad revenue, cost of programming, how they obtain the recipes, and other features means that the website usually misleads you into a recipe that is not what you are looking for, does not have enough data to help you, concentrates on a new taste sensation, and adds features that make it attractive to appearance and do not add to dietary needs.

1. Misleading. They show a low sodium alternative to the side or below are links to other similar recipes. These other recipes are often not low sodium at all. Their programming is tuned to salads, so it shows you other salads, with lots of salt. You can see this in that they often include far more salt in the ingredients, than 2,000 mg. Even after taking into account serving size, they are going to be high salt.
2. Not enough data. They say it is low sodium, but where is the data. Is it low sodium where it is 500 mg instead of 800 mg? How are you supposed to determine if you are breaking your sodium intake limits if you don't know any data?
3. Ingredients are too specialized. I am often looking at one of these and saying, "You have to be kidding me. How many people have fresh rosemary, cream, Greek style parsley, and a fresh parsley sprig to put on top? Do you know what it costs to buy that?"
4. Time to make is too long. They say it can be made "in only 8 minutes." In your dreams, perhaps. Try peeling potatoes and cutting them up when you have movement problems. You could be looking at 10 minutes or more for that step alone.
5. Complex ingredients and processing. Home cooking is not comprised of people preparing foods for the local five star restaurant reviewer. The reason people eat prepared foods in the home is that it can take a long time to prepare a meal before they can eat it. Recipes that are fancy and very attractive are lost on a person who is needs a decent meal that is easy to prepare. If it is too complex and takes too much processing, the prepackage stuff gets shoved in the microwave and the dietary restrictions suffer.

I need recipes and hints that help avoid packaged food

Prepared package foods, in addition to having content problems with restricted diet, are often far more expensive than a home prepared option. 

The ones that are not as costly, tend to encourage violating the dietary limits. One of my favorite low cost frozen entree options is usually on sale for only a dollar per meal. Unfortunately, their sodium content ranges from a low of 500 mg to 1,200 mg. Since you go from frozen to cooked in a microwave in three to five minutes, they would otherwise be perfect. They are not huge servings, but usually their Calorie count is not that huge either and the portion is often enough.

The ones that are "heart healthy" tend to cost five to ten times as much as the low cost easy to microwave frozen dinner.

The solution

The purpose here in posts to this blog on this subject is not to rant. The purpose is to find a solution and share it. In value improvement processes, we train people that if a problem is present, redesign it so that the problem cannot occur in the first place. The hints, suggestions, recipes, and other health related articles you will find on this blog are the results of assessments to generate a value improved process or condition for the problems mentions.

Please share the solutions with others

If you have a modification or thought related to a specific post, please comment so others can benefit from it. If you have a recipe or hint you would like added to a specific section, feel free to contact me and we may include it. Of course, letting others know about the resources in this blog will help others too.

One of my favorite quotes I saw in October 2011 is, "Learn for the mistakes of others because you will never live long enough to make them all yourself." -Anonymous

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Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
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