BONUS TIP: An unexpected bonus on the tables of some natural food restaurants is shakers of herbal blends or healthy salt like sesame salt instead of common table salt.
MENU SAVVY
404 “Heart-healthy” symbols on a menu can signal entrees that are lower in salt and sodium than other entrees, but not always. At one spa-type restaurant I visited, I was surprised to see a chicken teriyaki dinner labeled heart-smart: it may have been lower in fat and cholesterol than traditional fare, but it certainly wasn’t low in sodium. (Just two tablespoons of teriyaki sauce contain about 1,300 milligrams of sodium!) The truth is that heart-healthy labeling on restaurant menus often is not regulated. Many restaurants put heart-smart symbols on their menus without American Heart Association approval or without even claiming that those meals are low in salt. If you visit a restaurant where heart-healthy symbols are used on the menu, don’t consider the symbols rubber stamps that the entrees are good choices to order: judge for yourself whether each entree sounds as if it is low in sodium, and also be sure that the entree is not prepared with unhealthy margarine or excessive sweeteners.
405 Get the salt out of breakfast by avoiding surprisingly high-sodium croissants, pastries, and other baked goods, and all breakfast meats such as sausage, bacon, and ham. (These are sources of potentially carcinogenic sodium nitrites and nitrates.) Your best bets for breakfast are unsalted poached, scrambled, soft-boiled, or hard-boiled eggs; plain or vegetable omelettes without added salt; basic cereals such as oatmeal or shredded wheat; or fresh, fruit. One Salt Shaker.
406 Order salad as a first course instead of soup. Just like commercial canned soups sold in supermarkets, the soups that are served in restaurants are overly salty because they’re designed to satisfy taste buds used to too much salt. Until the public learns to prefer less salt in all its food, the best choice for a meal starter in restaurants will always be a salad. One Salt Shaker.
407 The safest salad dressing to order as far as salt and sodium is concerned is vinegar and oil or lemon wedges and oil. One Salt Shaker.
408 If you must order a different salad dressing, order it on the side and dip your fork into the dressing before taking bites of salad. Two Salt Shakers.
409 Or put a teaspoon of the dressing on your salad and thin it out with lemon juice or vinegar. Either of these options, however, isn’t as healthy for you as oil and plain vinegar or lemon juice because most commercial salad dressings contain not only unhealthy salt but also undesirable MSG and hydrogenated oils. Two Salt Shakers.
410 Better yet, bring a low-sodium dressing to the restaurant with you. Two-ounce watertight Tupperware containers known as Midgets are extremely helpful for this purpose, enabling you to unobtrusively carry homemade dressings or unrefined oils with you just about anywhere you go. One Salt Shaker.
411 Avoid ordering entrees that contain any of the following red-flag words or phrases: soy sauce, tamari sauce, or shoyu sauce—three ingredients that should always alert you to a meal with a high-sodium content. Other ingredients to beware of are:
412 Teriyaki sauce (which is a blend of soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar).
413 Barbecue sauce.
414 Breaded or battered entrees.
415 Butter sauces, cheese sauces, gravies, or au jus.
416 If you unknowingly order an entree that comes with breading, topping, or a salty sauce, scrape away as much of it as possible before eating. This coping strategy is particularly helpful when you’re in a social situation in which it would be awkward to send the entree back.
417 What are the best side dishes to order? A double order of steamed vegetables—or a salad and a baked potato—with toppings on the side. One Salt Shaker.
418 To season a potato or vegetables, you can use butter or sour cream, but try to limit yourself to one teaspoon of either. Even if you use salted butter (the kind which is usually served in restaurants), limiting yourself to one teaspoon will hold down the salt (and fat) content of the meal considerably. One to Two Salt Shakers.
BONUS TIP: If you do use salted butter in a restaurant, refrain from adding any extra salt at the table.
419 When you eat in restaurants, it’s up to you to avoid foods that commonly contain hidden MSG and excessive salt. Many restaurant workers may tell you that an entree doesn’t contain MSG or salt, but they often are unaware that packaged products used in the preparation of that food are laced with these two sources of unhealthy sodium. A good rule of thumb is to avoid eating restaurant food made from the same high-sodium ingredients that you would avoid buying in supermarkets.
420 Order fruit for dessert. (This choice is free not only of refined salt but also of refined sugar, too!) A goblet of berries always makes an elegant finish to dinner, and so do melon slices or fruit cocktail. Even if you don’t see fruit on the menu, do not hesitate to ask for it. Most good restaurants have fruit in the kitchen and are more than willing to serve it to you. One Salt Shaker.
421 No matter how careful you are when you eat in restaurants, expect that you probably will consume a little more sodium than you do at home. If you understand this, you can prepare for it: when you know you’re going to go out for dinner, eat as many low-sodium natural foods as you can the rest of the day to protect yourself from the excess sodium you may receive in that one meal. This coping strategy also should help you keep your sodium intake for the day underneath the maximum 2,400 milligrams.
INTERNATIONAL INSIGHTS
422 To add healthy variety to your diet, eat at ethnic restaurants as long as you are smart about salt when you do. First, choose the least commercial, most authentic ethnic restaurants in town. They are much more apt to offer real food rather than entrees made from salty processed ingredients. Second, order dishes where fresh vegetables are emphasized. Vegetables, as you know, are low in sodium and extremely high in sodium-balancing potassium.
423 Going Italian? Steer clear of buttery items, heavy tomato sauces, and cheesy pasta dishes. Instead order chicken, veal, fish, or shellfish prepared with garlic and lots of herbs, and add a big, green leafy salad. Flavorful vegetables abound in Italian cooking—choose from broiled mushrooms; sautéed peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant; braised spinach or escarole; or steamed artichokes. If you order the artichoke though, skip the butter sauce for dipping and ask for a vinaigrette dressing on the side.
424 At Greek or Middle Eastern restaurants, order chicken Athenian (Greek lemon-herb chicken), Mediterranean-style fish (broiled with olive oil, garlic, and herbs), broiled lamb chops, meat and vegetable kebabs, or perhaps stuffed grape leaves. don’t forget about salads at Mediterranean restaurants; they’re delicious topped with Tzatziki sauce (yogurt-cucumber sauce), red wine vinaigrette, or garlic herbed olive oil. If you’re sensitive to salt, make it a practice to ask for your salad without olives and feta cheese.
425 When you visit a French or continental restaurant, look for baked, broiled, poached, or steamed foods. Poached salmon is almost always a winner, but be sure to politely ask for the sauce—whatever it is—on the side. Other recommended entrées include poulet aux fines herbes (roast chicken with herbs), fish en papillote (fish cooked in its own juices with herbs), sole almondine, steamed mussels, salad Niçoise (minus the tuna, if it is canned), or salad nouvelle (minus the cheese).
426 If you like Mexican food, understand that the fillings and sauces in Mexican dishes usually are heavily salted (unless the restaurant makes its food from scratch, in which case you can ask for your entrée to be prepared without salt). To minimize the salt usually used in Mexican restaurants, get into the habit of ordering entrees like burritos, tostadas, or even huevos rancheros without cheese; try a small dab of guacamole, sour cream, or salsa instead for flavor. Fish entrees tend to be some of the lower-sodium picks at Mexican restaurants. Good selections include grilled fish tacos; red snapper or sea bass prepared Veracruz-style (with tomatoes, peppers, and onions); or camardnes al mojo de ajo (shrimp sautéed in olive oil with garlic). Although not a truly authentic Me
xican food, gazpacho, a refreshing cold vegetable soup, is a healthy choice that can be found in many Mexican restaurants.
427 The sodium content of Indian food varies depending on the restaurant. With tasty spice combinations such as curries, Indian food certainly doesn’t need salt, but some restaurants add quite a bit anyway. Call around and see if you can find an Indian restaurant that will cook individual orders without salt if you ask for it. Many are able to honor that request. If not, your best bets to order at Indian restaurants are the simplest entrees—dishes such as chicken or lamb tandoori or korma; chicken or lamb kebabs; or dahl salad (made with bulgur, snow peas, tomato, and olive oil).
428 Japanese food tends to be unusually high in salt and should, for the most part, be avoided. If you do go to a Japanese restaurant, be especially savvy about salt: look on the menu for grilled or steamed fish or ask if hibachi-style entrees can be prepared without the soy sauce and added salt. Also try sushi made from cooked crab and shrimp, or sushi made from vegetables like avocados and cucumbers. A dab or two of wasabi (Japanese horseradish) is all you need to add kick to even the most simply prepared Japanese entrees.
BONUS TIP: don’t be tempted to try sushi made from raw fish. No matter how meticulously raw fish is prepared, it can be contaminated with parasites. Although raw fish sushi may seem like a novelty worth trying, just a bite of contaminated fish can be dangerous. Enjoy exotic cuisine without the health risks by sticking with sushi made from vegetables or cooked seafood.
429 If Chinese food is on the menu, beware. Most Chinese sauces such as hoison, oyster, black bean, and soy sauces are just loaded with salt. Find out what dishes can be made to order and request that no MSG, salt, or any of the sauces listed above be used in your meal. Create tasty combinations by choosing chicken, beef, seafood, or tofu, then combine your choice with vegetables like broccoli, scallions, snow peas, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, and bok choy (Chinese cabbage). Ask for your mixture to be stir-fried in peanut, sesame, or canola oil or, even better, order it steamed. To add extra flavor to your meal, request sides of hot mustard, crushed garlic, minced ginger, chopped scallions, and Chinese five-spice powder.
BONUS TIP: If you suspect that your waiter doesn’t understand your request for no MSG in your food, try saying “No may gin to get your message across.
ON THE RUN
430 Fast food is a way of life for many people these days, but understand that most fast food is a disaster in terms of excessive sodium, salt, sugar, and nonessential fat. To get an idea just how high in sodium fast food is, consider this: other than salad, the lowest-sodium choice at the major fast-food chains is a plain hamburger, which by itself has between 500 and 600 milligrams of sodium. (This amount is for the hamburger by itself. If you add a sodium-rich shake and an order of salty fries with ketchup, the sodium content skyrockets, supplying in that one meal much more than some salt-sensitive individuals should have in a single day.) For your best health, try to limit your intake of fast food as much as possible. If you do occasionally eat fast food, ask for a Nutrition Facts brochure at the restaurant and choose the lowest-sodium item possible. Then emphasize low-sodium natural foods the rest of the day to negate the fast-foods high-sodium content.
431 Fast-food sandwiches make extremely high-sodium meals. The bread itself is high in salt, and so are the extras like ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. In addition, sodium-rich processed meat products are the rule in fast-food sandwiches. Arby’s roast beef, for example, is not real roast beef. It is a processed beef that contains added salt, water, and sodium phosphates. So is the turkey meat in deli sandwiches and the MSG-laced chicken meat in Burger Kings BK Broiler Sandwich. When you add up all the unhealthy sodium sources contained in fast-food sandwiches, it’s easy to see how one sandwich can single-handedly provide more than half the recommended daily sodium allowance. One of the most effective ways to get the salt out of your diet is to ban fast-food sandwiches from your life.
432 Look for prepackaged salads that are offered at a number of outlets, including some of the bigger fast-food hamburger chains. These often are your best fast-food choices, as long as you avoid the salty dressings that come with them. If you know your schedule necessitates your picking up a salad to go, take along your own dressing (as described in tip 410) to avoid the sodium-rich processed varieties. One to Three Salt Shakers.
433 Try to find salad bars where you can choose the items you want so you can have more control over the amount of sodium you consume. When you fill your plate at a salad bar, load up on as many fresh, unprocessed vegetables as you like, but be sure to avoid the high-sodium extras: bacon bits, croutons, pickled foods, mayonnaise-based salads, and premixed salad dressings. This suggestion is helpful to everyone wanting to get the salt out, but particularly for those who are sensitive to MSG. One to Two Salt Shakers.
434 When you have to eat on the run, you can find healthier food at “home-style” fast-food restaurants like Boston Market or Kenny Rogers Roasters, but you still need to be careful about what you order. For example, a roasted chicken pita sandwich may sound healthy, but one offered at Kenny Rogers supplies 1,527 sodium milligrams—three-quarters of the amount most of us need per day. A chicken pot pie also sounds wholesome, but just one pot pie from Boston Market supplies an entire day’s worth of sodium (2,380 milligrams)! Fortunately, however, choices are available that are much lower in sodium. The first thing to know is that much of the sodium on rotisserie chicken is on the skin or within the skin itself. If you eat a quarter of either white-meat or dark-meat chicken with the skin removed, and if you also order low-sodium side dishes such as steamed vegetables, baked sweet potato, corn, a side salad, or fruit salad, you can enjoy an entire meal for about 500 milligrams of sodium, a respectable amount that can fit into most low-to moderate-sodium diets. Three Salt Shakers.
435 For an on-the-go snack or mini-meal, try a balanced nutrition bar such as the Balance bar made by BioFoods. Many of my clients enjoy this product because each bar contains a nutrient blend that provides both quick and long-term energy, and its convenient enough to carry anywhere. Its also healthier than a candy bar and much lower in sodium than fast food or other high-protein snacks such as beef jerky. Look for Balance bars in health food stores or call 1-800-678-7246 to order them directly. Two Salt Shakers.
436 The most comforting fast food for lunch is low-salt soup or leftovers from home. If you invest in a wide-mouthed thermos, you can take your favorite foods to work with you, and lunch will be ready whenever you want it. Homemade foods are much lower in sodium than typical take-out foods and cost a lot less. They’re also more satisfying and more nutritious. One to Two Salt Shakers.
437 Another quick lunch is a Mushroom Broccoli Cheese Muffin, which is a meal in itself; it serves as a wonderful substitute for a sandwich when you are on the run. If you plan ahead by making a batch of the following muffins ahead of time and then freezing them, you have a ready-to-eat complete meal with each muffin, which you can grab whenever you need. Note that even though the following recipe contains cheese and a small amount of regular butter, one muffin still provides only about one-fifth the sodium found in a regular fast-food burger. (If you want to reduce the sodium content of the muffins further, however, just substitute unsalted butter or olive oil and sodium-reduced cheese in the recipe.) This creative idea and recipe comes from Smart Muffins by Jane Kinderlehrer. Two Salt Shakers.
MUSHROOM BROCCOLI CHEESE MUFFINS
2 cups lightly steamed chopped broccoli
½ cup grated mozzarella cheese
½ cup chopped onions
1 cup chopped mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour
2 eggs
3 tablespoons wheat germ
4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon crushed oregano Sesame seeds for garnish
Combine the broccoli and cheese and set aside. Sauté the onion
s and mushrooms in the butter. Stir in the 2 tablespoons of pastry flour and add ½ cup of water. Cook slowly until the sauce thickens.
In a mixing bowl or food processor, blend together the eggs, wheat germ, remaining flour, pepper, and oregano.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Oil 12 regular-size muffin cups and sprinkle the sesame seeds on the bottom of each.
Combine the broccoli-cheese mixture with the other mixture and spoon into the muffin cups. Top each with a sprinkle of sesame seeds (and a pinch of cheese, if desired). Bake for 20 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.
438 Consider purchasing a small cooler so, you can take low-sodium cold or perishable foods to work with you. (A cooler is especially helpful if you live in a warm climate.) A few ideas of tasty cold lunch items you can carry in a cooler are: Fresh Herbal Tabouli (in tip 202); Salt-Free Sauerkraut (in tip 203); vinaigrette-marinated vegetables; bean salads; salad fixings and salad dressings (like the Reduced Calorie Ranch Dressing in tip 217); vegetable sticks and dip; hard-boiled eggs; cold cooked chicken, turkey, or beef slices; and even leftover Turkey Sausage Pizza (in tip 301). One to Three Salt Shakers.
439 Carry along low-sodium bottled water with you. This tip may not seem important, but it is, particularly when you unknowingly consume more sodium than you should while eating on the run. Remember, low-sodium water flushes the system of excess salt and helps to prevent bloating and weight gain from retaining excess water. In addition, bottled water tastes better than tap water, so you’ll be apt to drink more of it. It’s also better for you. One of the best preventive measures to get the unhealthy salt out of your system (and one of the healthiest habits in general) is to drink low-sodium bottled (or filtered) water frequently throughout the day. One Salt Shaker.
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