THE FINE ART OF MODERATION
111 Do not restrict yourself so much that you end up bingeing on salt. Human nature is such that we always seem to yearn for things we aren’t supposed to have. My philosophy is to go ahead and satisfy your taste for salt, but do so intelligently and moderately. In the long run, this strategy is more effective and better for you than total abstinence, which can cause health problems.
112 Substitute healthy salty snacks for salty junk food. (This book will show you how.) Then eat these treats slowly, so your taste buds can savor every salty morsel.
113 Split salty foods with others and replace the food you’re missing with more fresh foods. In other words, instead of devouring half of a high-salt pizza, have a slice or two along with a big, fresh, low-sodium salad.
114 Allow yourself indulgences during special occasions and vacations as long as you resume a healthier, lower-sodium diet once your regular routine begins again.
115 Do the best you can to avoid foods that contain unnecessary sodium, but don’t berate yourself if you aren’t always perfect. If you ate more salt today than you would have liked, accept it and just vow to eat better tomorrow.
116 Remember that while avoiding table salt is important for good health, it is not the only thing that promotes health. By all means, try to get the salt out of your diet, but not to the point of obsession. Be sure to keep salt reduction in perspective with other factors that contribute to a healthy quality of life: avoidance of unhealthy trans-fats, refined sugar, refined carbohydrates, and chemicals; regular exercise; a positive self-image; and meaningful work and personal relationships.
Get the Salt Out of Your Water
Water. The only liquid that by itself is a nutrient to humans. This indispensable fluid comprises almost two-thirds of the body’s mass and hydrates every living cell. Water also transports nutrients into vital organs like the heart and carries away waste material. Water is so important to human health that we can go a week or more without food but only three to five days without water.
Unfortunately, most of us have taken water for granted. For decades, we’ve used water carelessly for our own convenience, without realizing that we’ve been contaminating one of the most important substances that nourishes us. Our use of water softeners is a perfect example of our neglectful use of water. By removing beneficial calcium and magnesium from hard water and replacing these minerals with excessive amounts of sodium, we have altered water so that it may help soaps lather up better, but we also have altered it so that it is a health hazard for ourselves and an environmental hazard for our planet.
Humans can’t survive long on salty water. Shipwrecked sailors throughout history are a testament to this fact: many have died trying to quench their thirst with salty seawater. If you remember that drinking seawater is harmful and eventually lethal to humans, then it’s easy to understand why drinking salt-contaminated water also is dangerous.
Drinking is not the only way we absorb salt from water. Our digestive systems also absorb salt from foods that are cooked in salted water, and our skin topically picks up salt from water we bathe in. My experience counseling clients for more than twenty years has shown that drinking water, cooking water, and bathing water often are overlooked keys to excess sodium levels.
The tips in this chapter provide rarely covered information about water. They will give you the incentive and the know-how to get the salt out of your water as well as your food.
DRINKING WATER
117 Never drink salt-softened water in place of hard water. Many studies have shown that people who drink hard water have lower rates of heart disease than people who drink softened water. This is because hard water is rich in hard-to-find minerals that are protective against heart disease. Hard waters mineral content is so impressive that it can rival that found in mineral-rich foods. One liter of hard drinking water, for example, can provide up to 375 milligrams of calcium. By comparison, one of the best sources of calcium, a three-ounce can of sardines, contains 372 milligrams, but it also contains undesirably high amounts of sodium.
118 If you have high blood pressure or high-sodium levels, find out the sodium content of your tap water through your local water department or health department. Your drinking water sometimes can sabotage a healthful, low-sodium diet by contributing as much as 3,750 milligrams of sodium in ten eight-ounce glasses! People who live in snowy areas where road salt is used or those who live in coastal communities frequently have saltier water than individuals who live in other areas. If you are on a sodium-restricted diet and your tap waters sodium content is more than 80 parts per million, the American Heart Association recommends that you switch to sodium-free bottled water. One Salt Shaker.
119 Know that all bottled waters are not low in sodium. Some, in fact, contain more than 1,000 milligrams of sodium in every liter! That’s more than 250 milligrams per cup! The following are particularly high-sodium brands you should avoid: Kaiser Friedrich Quelle, Laoshan, Saint Yorre, San Narciso, Uberkinger, Vichy Catalan, Vichy Celestins, and Vichy Springs.
120 Drink bottled water that is low in sodium and that contains more heart-healthy calcium and magnesium than sodium. Brands of bottled water that meet these criteria are: Arrowhead, Evian, Golden Eagle, La Croix, Vichy Novella, and Vittel Grande. One Salt Shaker.
121 Read the labels on other brands of bottled water and look for water that is low in sodium (containing 140 milligrams of sodium or less per serving), very low in sodium (containing 35 milligrams of sodium or less per serving), or sodium-free. Although it’s a good idea to drink a bottled water rich in both calcium and magnesium when it’s available, your second-best choice is any water that is low in sodium, such as popular brands like Calistoga, Crystal Geyser, Perrier, and Poland Spring. One Salt Shaker.
122 Try to drink at least eight glasses of low-sodium water each day. Despite what many people believe, drinking more water does not cause bloating and water retention. Quite the contrary; it is a simple way of flushing unnecesary salt out of the body and of reducing bloating. Just be sure the water you drink is low in sodium. One Salt Shaker.
BONUS TIP: In addition to drinking low-sodium water, its also tremendously important to drink water that is free of chlorine, chemicals, lead, rust, and pathogenic bacteria and parasites. A high-quality water filter takes out impurities like these and gives you clean water that will support optimal health. To receive more information about the Doulton of England water filters that I recommend to my clients, call Uni Key Health Systems, which is listed in the Resources section.
123 Always opt for seltzer instead of club soda. Both are made from tap water that is filtered and carbonated, but club soda is higher in sodium because it has mineral salts added to it. Common ingredients added to club soda include sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sodium chloride (salt), and sometimes disodium phosphate. Remember that the lower-sodium choice always is seltzer.
COOKING WATER
124 Refrain from adding salt to cooking water when you prepare pasta, cereals, and grains. Even though package directions usually call for it, adding salt simply is not necessary and can contribute hundreds of unwanted sodium milligrams per dish. Many people think the addition of salt lowers the boiling point of water, but in fact it has no effect on the waters boiling temperature in the amounts normally added. One Salt Shaker.
125 When cooking grains and spaghetti, try adding a bay leaf to cooking water in place of salt. It is such a nice substitute that nutritionist Judith Benn Hurley calls bay leaf “the sodium slasher.” One Salt Shaker.
126 Or add a few drops of fresh lemon juice or a pinch of herbs to the cooking water. This is a creative way to eliminate the salt and give pasta and grains a more refreshing flavor. One Salt Shaker.
127 If you think cooking food in salted water couldn’t possibly affect your health, consider this: in the 1970s, two tribes in the Solomon Islands were found to have very similar lifestyles and diets, but one of the tribes, the Lau, cooked their vegetables in seaw
ater, and the other tribe, the Aita, did not. The Aita consumed about 500 milligrams of sodium each day and did not have one case of hypertension among them. The Lau, on the other hand, consumed 3,000 to 4,500 extra sodium milligrams each day from its practice of cooking with salty seawater, and 10 percent of the population suffered from high blood pressure.
BATHING WATER
128 Switch to bathing in magnetically conditioned water instead of salt-softened water. Many people prefer to bathe with salt-softened water because it doesn’t leave mineral deposits and because soaps work better in it. Unfortunately though, the cleansing benefits of softened water come with an undesirable trade-off: softened water increases the risk of heart disease and may also contribute to goiters and gallbladder disease. Even worse, fatal heart attacks and strokes are much more common in areas where softened water is used. Instead of using a water softener, which replaces valuable calcium and magnesium with sodium, use a magnetic water conditioner, which changes the orientation of water’s mineral ions. Hard water treated in this way will “behave” as if it was softened (in other words, as if the mineral content was lowered). This gives you the best of both worlds: all of the beneficial minerals present in hard water along with many of the cleansing benefits salt-softened water provides. To purchase or learn more about magnetic water conditioners, see the GMX listing in the Resources section.
129 Keep this in mind: getting the salt out of your bathing water is good for the environment. A research project conducted at Wayne State University found that salt from water softeners is a potential source of groundwater contamination. This is alarming because a large portion of our drinking water comes from groundwater sources. The average household with a water softener uses an eighty-pound bag of salt to treat its water each month. Ultimately, this results in close to a thousand pounds of salt being dumped into the ground each year—by a single family! When you use a water conditioner that does not use salt, you not only improve your health, but you do your part to protect the health of the planet as well.
130 Use the skin’s efficient ability to absorb minerals to your advantage, not to your disadvantage. Nutritionist Martin Fox has noted that an adult who takes a fifteen-minute bath typically absorbs almost twice as much water—and the substances dissolved in it—as he or she receives from a day’s supply of drinking water. This means that you can add magnesium-rich Epsom salts to bathwater to increase your absorption of heart-healthy magnesium, but you must avoid using salt-softened water, particularly if you bathe frequently.
Get the Salt Out of Breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it frequently is an afterthought to many individuals. In today’s fast-paced world, Americans often start their day with instant foods, which almost always means salty foods. Whether they eat a sausage biscuit from a drive-through or hurriedly eat a bowl of ready-to-eat cereal, they usually consume excessive levels of unhealthy sodium and refined salt whenever they choose convenience for breakfast over nutrition.
Few of us realize it, but the nutrition we receive during breakfast can have a huge impact on how we feel and even on what we eat the rest of the day. Judging from my clients’ cases, too many people lag in energy because they eat the wrong foods for breakfast. They mistakenly believe all protein and fats are bad and all carbohydrates are healthy, so they avoid quality foods—like eggs—that could keep them going for hours. Instead, they load up on nutrient-poor processed carbohydrates such as white bread, croissants, English muffins, and bagels. These foods are so tasteless on their own (having been stripped of the very parts that give them the most flavor) that they often have to be made with salt or topped with a salty spread like butter to be palatable. Even worse, processed carbohydrates like these lose important minerals like magnesium and potassium that would otherwise offset the effects of added sodium. In addition, eating refined carbohydrates ultimately can cause people to eat more salt: when individuals eat these foods at the beginning of the day, they often crave and may even binge on salty junk food and sugary snacks just a few hours after breakfast to get a quick, but short-lived, jolt of the energy they lack. (Both salt and sugar temporarily stimulate the energy-producing adrenal glands.)
An important key to reducing salt intake is to eat a healthy breakfast that is not only low in sodium but also nutritious enough to prevent bingeing on salt later in the day. Eating a healthy breakfast does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. It simply requires switching to whole-grain carbohydrates and balancing them with small amounts of quality protein and fats for longer-term energy.
The tips in this chapter will help you do that. You’ll learn how to get the salt out of breakfast while you keep convenience, flavor, and long-lasting nutrition in.
BREADS AND SPREADS
131 Choose whole grain bread that is low in sodium. Commercial yeasted bread always has salt added to it to prevent the bread from rising too much and developing a strong yeasty taste. To prevent consuming more sodium than you bargained for, try to find bread that contains less than 140 milligrams of sodium per slice and that is made with sea salt instead of regular table salt. One Salt Shaker.
132 Never use self-rising flour if you bake bread or biscuits at home. Self-rising flour has salt and leavening agents already added to it, a process that creates an outrageously high-sodium product. (Gold Medal Self-Rising Flour, for example, contains 1,520 milligrams of sodium per cup and Aunt Jemima’s Self-Rising Flour actually contains 3,176 milligrams of sodium per cup!) The unhealthy sodium content of self-rising flour obviously is dangerous. Avoid using this product at all costs.
133 If you make your own bread, you can make it without salt as long as you follow these instructions: when the dough is rising in the bowl, occasionally punch it lightly with two fingers to prevent excessive rising. When the indentation of your fingers no longer bounces back, it’s time to shape the dough and bake it. One Salt Shaker.
134 Why eat whole grain bread? Because it is rich in nutrients that help control the effects of overconsumption of sodium. It also has great flavor, texture, and chewiness and is delicious on its own—certainly better butterless than white or mostly white bread.
135 Try whole grain sourdough bread for a great change of pace. Since sourdough bread is not made with yeast, it has no sugar and also is low in salt and sodium. Instead of yeast, sourdough bread is naturally leavened with fermenting agents that break down the flour’s cellulose structure, neutralize its mineral-inhibiting phytic acid, and release more nutrients into the dough. The result is a bread that supplies more minerals that are easier for your body to absorb. French Meadow Bakery makes a particularly nice line of sourdough breads that are low in sodium (even though they don’t taste low in sodium). It is also one of the few companies I know of that goes to the extra trouble and expense to use healthy, unrefined sea salt in its products instead of table salt. Look for this healthful brand in natural food stores throughout the country. One to Two Salt Shakers (depending on the variety).
136 A dab of sweet butter is a satisfying way to top toast, even when you use unsalted butter. For additional sweetness as a spread, top butter with a light sprinkling of cinnamon. (If you’re concerned about eating butter, see the Bonus Tip to tip 109 for additional information.) One Salt Shaker.
137 Is rye toast with unsalted butter too bland for you? Try dressing it up German-style with savory Caraway Butter. This idea and recipe was developed by nutritionist Melissa Diane Smith. One Salt Shaker.
CARAWAY BUTTER
⅓ cup unsalted whipped butter
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
Crush the caraway seeds between 2 spoons for the freshest flavor. Put the unsalted whipped butter in a coffee cup or small bowl and let it soften slightly at room temperature. Then cream the butter and the crushed caraway seeds together with a spoon until well mixed. Spread on toasted rye or sourdough rye bread by the teaspoonful or store in a covered container in the refrigerator for a few days. Makes about ¼ cup.
BONUS TI
P: Add a few teaspoons of un refined flaxseed oil or walnut oil (which you can find in health food stores) to the recipe above to increase your intake of beneficial Omega 3 essential fatty acids (EFA’s). Often called the “good fats,” Omega 3 EFAs are necessary for proper functioning of the heart and can lower high blood pressure.
138 Another great spread to top toast is unsalted peanut butter or any other unsalted nut or seed butter of your choice. Nut and seed butters are rich sources of heart-healthy magnesium and potassium, which are in short supply in the typical American diet. In addition, whole grain bread spread with unsalted nut butter is one of the ultimate fast foods: it’s quick to make, low in sodium, and packed with nutrition. Look for nut butters labeled “unsalted” or “no salt added” by companies like Arrowhead Mills, Marantha Natural Foods, or Roaster-Fresh by Kettle Foods in natural food stores. These brands do not contain the unhealthy hydrogenated oils and sugar found in most commercial nut butters. One Salt Shaker.
139 Skip the bagels and opt for a slice or two of low-sodium, whole grain bread. Bagels are surprisingly high in salt: one three-ounce plain Sara Lee bagel, for example, contains 580 milligrams of sodium. If you want to treat yourself to a small amount of cream cheese (which has only 84 milligrams of sodium per ounce), spread it on low-sodium bread instead of a bagel. One to Two Salt Shakers.
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