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Hello. I'm Kathy with Senior Care Corner with another family caregiver tip. Today's topic:
Cutting our Salt Habit. We all know that what we eat impacts our health
and our blood pressure. The American Heart Association recommends that we cut our sodium
intake to about 2300mg per day, which is roughly equivalent to 1tsp of salt. If we are over
51 and already have hypertension, they recommend that we further reduce that number to 1500mg
of sodium a day. Many of our foods naturally contain a lower
number of sodium milligrams. However, the main portion of sodium in our diet comes from
processing. We can slowly reduce the sodium in our diet with some small changes. And so
we're going to give you some tips today to help you make changes.
The first thing we want to do is make sure we all are aware about our nutrient label.
Every food that we buy has a nutrition label. And it will tell us how much sodium in each
food item. The beauty of this label is to compare different like products to find the
one that's lowest in sodium for you. So the first thing you want to look at your
nutrition label is the serving size. This particular food has a serving size of one
cup. So all of these nutrients are found in that one cup, if you eat more or less of that
amount then you just need to portion out that amount of sodium. This particular food has
a sodium, we'll go on down to the sodium, of 660mg per 1 cup serving. If you go over
to the far side you can see the percent daily value is 28%.
In order to follow a lower sodium diet, we want to make that number less than 5%. Anything
over 20% daily value is considered a high sodium food and you probably want to avoid
that and find something a little bit lower in sodium.
So now that we know what we're looking for in our label, let's talk about the foods that
we eat each day. The first and easiest tip to cut your sodium intake is to get rid of
your salt shaker. There are very many inexpensive pepper grinders that you can buy at the grocery
store in the spice aisle if you'd like to spice it up with some fresh pepper.
Also you may want to go to your spice aisle and make some friends with some new seasonings.
These seasonings and especially the seasoning blends will add a punch a flavor to your food.
When you're eating a lower sodium diet, you may want to get some different flavoring in
there to take the place of that sodium that you may be missing.
Another tip to try to always use fresh or frozen vegetables which are naturally low
in sodium; the canned vegetables as we'll talk about right now, have a wide range of
sodium content. This particular canned vegetable is corn, the regular corn. It contains, per
one half serving, 330mg of sodium. The total daily value is 14%, so we know that's a little
bit high. We could probably do a little bit better, it's not under 5% yet. If you were
to buy the canned no added salt, sodium corn; then we know that would be 0mg of sodium.
So that's a good choice right there if you're not going to make your own fresh or frozen
corn. So what else do we know about canned foods?
Well, sodium in soup we know is pretty high. It's pretty hard to find soups that are low
in sodium. For instance, this can of tomato soup per serving, which is considered a half
a cup in this case, is 480mg of sodium which is about 20% daily value just for that one
serving. However this can of soup is two and a half servings. So a lot of us eat the whole
can when we have a can of soup or at least half a can. So if you were to eat the whole
can, your sodium would be 1200mg or 50% daily value. That would be a little bit high; it
would be hard to manage a low sodium diet eating that type of a food product. You can
find lower sodium soups on the market. And you can even find a lower sodium tomato soup
that is 50mg per serving. So there again, you want to go to your spice aisle and jazz
it up with some spices because that may not have enough flavor for you.
Another way that we get a lot of sodium in our diet is with processed prepared packaged
items such as this potato mix. If you look at the label on this particular product you'll
see a half a cup serving has 450mg of sodium or 21% daily value. You might be better off
if you're trying to maintain your low sodium diet if you're using fresh potatoes to make
mashed potatoes or baked potatoes instead of this potato mix. That would definitely
lower our sodium. There are many different kinds of high sodium
foods on the market that you may be eating on a daily basis. Things that have been salted
cured or made with a brine. Foods such as ham and bacon, luncheon meats, pickles, sauerkraut
olives; those are all foods that are in their own processing very high in sodium. A lot
of those foods don't really have a lot of good alternative for low sodium foods so you
may want to try other options to replace those items.
We encourage you to check out SeniorCareCorner.com for more low sodium tips and dash diet information
to help you maintain and manage your blood pressure. We also encourage you to stop by
and check out our family caregiving tips and information for seniors and those who care
for them. And until we see you again, have a nice day!