A member named Shaun had a lengthy thread going here a month or so ago. It had a lot of useful information.

Does anyone remember the title of Shaun's thread?

I've not looked at Shambo's blog, but I suspect it would have a lot of helpful info.

Here is a link that might be useful: Please, don't pass the salt

Yes, here it is, "goting out to eat while on a low sodium diet".

Annie

Here is a link that might be useful: Low Sodium diet

elisamcs, good luck to your brother, there's salt in nearly everything in stores and restaurants anymore. Cottage cheese astounded me!

I have found that some of the diabetic recipes are pretty low in sodium, so they're a good place to look, like Diabetic Living.

Annie

And please remember that salt does NOT equal sodium. Salt can be a small part of the equation, while sodium comes in many many different forms.

Your brother is on a low sodium diet, not a low salt diet.

Hope this little clarification helps.

There were a lot of comments in Shaun's thread about losing the craving for salt over time. Hopefully Shaun will weigh in and let you know how things are working for her and maybe share some of the recipes she has tried.

Good luck!

Teresa

That's not a ''low'' daily sodium level.

That is a perfectly normal sodium intake level, and if he eats normal home cooking he will easily stay within 1500 mg/day.

However, if he regularly eats junk food, packaged food, processed food, or restaurant/take-out food, he will be hard-pressed to eat anywhere below 2500+ mg/day.

Have him read some recipes and divide the salt content by the number of servings, keeping in mind that 1 gram of ordinary table salt is about 400 mg of sodium, and 1 teaspoon of table salt is about 6 grams. He should also look up the sodium content of packaged and processed foods like bacon, cheese, ketchup, soup, potato chips, etc. Finally, he should look up the sodium content of commercially-prepared meals, starting with fast-food items like McDonalds' burgers, and he can assume that restaurant meals are just as heavy on the sodium. Have him also pour 1/4 tsp of salt from the shaker, and see how much that really is. Have him also look up the sodium content by gram and teaspoon of kosher salt.

He will quickly see that he can eat nearly anything he wants if it is cooked from scratch at home and he doesn't go nuts with the shaker at the table; he can eat modest to small quantities of packaged and processed foods; and he can eat commercially prepared food hardly at all or at most very rarely (like, once a week at most).

The person who should do this research is him, not you. Because, if he wants to live, he needs to learn this, know this, really absorb this, and stick with it. It won't help for you to know it.

I know a lot of people who are in very marginal health - bad heart, diabetic, organs struggling - and who nevertheless eat very unhealthy diets. They hear all this stuff from their families, friends, and doctors. If they don't hear it from themselves, nothing ever changes. Most of them will die early - often quite young - after having had a poor quality of life for the previous decades.

He should also read up on other dietary poisons like HFCS.

Thank you for all the feedback. Luckily, my brother is motivated to do the right thing, and he even enjoys cooking. Right now he is in pain from the surgery to implant a defibrillator/pacemaker, so I'm doing the research now. He will definitely be doing a lot on his own.

I'll be passing along all the links and comments to him. Thanks again.

There are some wonderful resources available out there. Two of the best are listed on the right side of my blog. Dick Logue's site, Low Sodium Cooking is full of helpful information, resources, and recipes. He's written several low sodium cookbooks and offers a free online newsletter. Don Gazzaniga has another wonderful web site Megaheart filled with loads of information, resources, and recipes. He too has written several cookbooks and offers a free online newsletter.

Another great site is The Daily Dish . Christy posts some wonderful low sodium recipes. Low Salt Foods is full of helpful information on low sodium products.

For purchasing hard-to-find low sodium products, I can heartily recommends both Healthy Heart Market and Saltwatcher . Heartwise Food is another good source as well. I've used all three sites for ordering and have been very satisfied.

Hope all this helps.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: Please DON'T Pass the Salt!

Elisa,

My DH has health problems and we actually have a slightly lower target than your brother's.

It seems insurmountable at first, especially when it can't be eased into. If you've got a low-salt diet order, and judging by the ICD implantation, kidney issues, etc., I can guess what you're dealing with, you need to get it in place ASAP. Or your brother will be right back where he started from.

The need for rapid change is one of the biggest challenges because it takes awhile for a lowered-salt diet to taste good again. It will get better as you will adjust, but most people eat four or five times that amount, daily. So even thogh 1500 mg/d doesn't sound much less than official ideal for non-impaired people, it's a huge functional and taste change for most people. I know, because we've BTDT.

OK, here's some quick tips: almost all prepared food will put you in trouble, unless you only eat once per day. And if he's got diabetes that won't work.

By prepared food I mean almost all restaurant food, especially fast food. Almost all canned and frozen prepared stuff, including most stuff marketed as "healthy" prepared food. (There are exceptions, you'll have to read label after label to find the keepers.) Often the lowered sodium product isn't either truly low (300 mg, or less, per portion) or they make it up by loading it with carbs.

Here are a couple of good things that are mainstays in our house for fast eats: some of the Imagine Organic aseptic packaged LOWER IN SODIUM soups (corn or sweet potato=140 mg/cup). Other lower in sodium aseptic packaged soups may or may not work for you. (We like some tomato, some roasted pepper, etc. you have to read the labels.) Muir Glen makes a good line of no salt added canned tomato products which are great, esp. the fire roasted ones.

Most commercial low or no salt bread sucks, to put it plainly. This is where making your own really is better. But salt has a functional role in bread-making, in addition to its taste role, so you will need to expect to have some trouble adapting "regular" recipes simply by leaving out the salt. Try some of the specifically low-sodium bread recipes for starters. Also if you buy unsliced bread, you can slice it thinner than normal and work the total sodium down that way, at least a bit.

No-salt cheese is mostly bad; swiss is naturally low (60-80mg/oz) so it's a my go-to cheese. I do use (sparingly) higher sodium cheeses (e.g. Piave cheddar which can be as high as 500+ mg/oz when all I want is to grate some up as a topping. Then the portion is so small it's OK, and the sharp, rich taste really makes a difference.) You can make good grilled cheese sandwiches with Swiss cheese, too. Use a sharper mustard, for extra taste.

For cottage cheese get some no-salt added tubs and cut it 50% with the higher salted product. That produces an acceptable level.

Watch frozen veg. products, even some of the un-sauced ones often have baking soda (aka SODIUM bicarbonate) added to preserve the green color, which turns a nearly sodium-free item into something you have to "count".

If you need to eat out, go to a restaurant and ask for plain grilled chicken, never seasoned and grilled on a scraped grill. Ask if the veg. were precooked, if so ask that they be rinsed in a hot water and then briefly re-nuked. Most pasta is out because it often has been parboiled in salted water. (You don't need to add salt to pasta if you cook it at home. Never mind what the cook books say.) For nation-wide family restuarant chains when ttraveling, we've had good luck with Ruby Tuesdays. They are usually quite accommodating, and the big salad bar is good, too.

There are many, if not most, recipes that you will read in cooking mags and books that will have a sodium content that's way out of your range. But you can always bring that salt way down by not adding it, or adding a lot less. You will have some big recipe failures this way but you will learn what works for you.

Your brother's Dr. probably told him this: DO NO USE LITE-SALT or SALT SUBSTITUTES. These usually contain potassium "salts" instead of sodium and they will mess things up on the other end (as well as possibly interfere with some of his meds - ACE/ARBS, diuretics, etc.) These products are meant for people who are just "cutting down" salt, not for people at risk of CHF.

It's no picnic dealing with a low-salt, most likely very low-fat, diabetic diet (And maybe also low Vitamin K, as well?). It takes a huge , constant vigilance to put it in place successfully. Your brother will need a lot of help, especially if these are sudden changes, in order for it to not become overwhelming.

As JohnLiu says most things that are "too salty" can be made at home. But it's a completely different culinary regimen, because even many certifiably homemade dishes contain ingredients that are very salty to begin with. And it takes a lot more time and effort.

Can you give me some idea what you're trying to accomplish, right now? What sorts of meals are you trying to prepare? I may be able to make some specific suggestions.

In the meantime, you can't go wrong with broiled chicken or fish, steamed veg, small baked sweet potato and salad for dinner. For lunch a truly lower-salt soup (or big salad), and an egg or tuna or chicken salad sandwich, and fruit for dessert. And maybe regular oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. This would leave you some pretty useful lee-way to add some other tasty, higher-salt add-ons: cheese, lightly salted pop-corn, regular (not homemade low salt for the time being) whole-wheat bread, etc. Possibly some diabetic-OK cookies or icecream; prepared chocolate soy-pudding is a nice snacky-thing, but I'm not sure if it fits with diabetic diets.

I remember standing in my supermarket when this was a new thing for me and feeling that nothing I could make would be safe for my husband. I actually cried right in the aisle, I was so upset. We ate pretty simple, even primitive, meals for awhile early on - and I've thrown out a lot of tried-but-turned-out-to-be ghastly recipes. But it does get easier when you learn how to cheat out the excess salt and still go for the familiar flavors. While the prospect of learning a whole new taste-profile can be interesting, in the abstract, familiar tastes and dishes are very comforting and even necessary, IMO for healing. You just need to keep tweaking it until you've got it right.

It does get better.

L

elisamc, I was thinking of you when I made dinner tonight. I counted how much salt I used.

Four dishes (chicken breast w/ white wine-butter-garlic-cream-capers sauce, cream of pureed mushroom soup, mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans) for five people (but two kids, so maybe equivalent to four adults), with about 1/3 of it left over. I used 5/4 teaspoons of kosher salt, basically a 1/4 tsp per dish and then another 1/4 tsp to adjust the soup, that is about 2400 mg sodium. Plus whatever sodium is in 20 drained capers, maybe 200 mg? The butter was unsalted. The mushroom stock was homemade and unsalted (takes 20 minutes in a pressure cooker). The chicken breasts were cut from a whole bird, not injected. So that is roughly 500 mg sodium per person. It all tasted normal - not ''low-sodium'' - and I didn't use any tricky or unusual alternative spices as salt substitutes. Some of the things that shambo and others know, would have made this even lower-sodium.

I'm mentioning this to help your brother realize that he can eat very ''normal'' meals - if he cooks from scratch with minimal use of processed foods. If the above were made with canned stock, a salt-injected bird, salted butter, if the capers were a main ingredient rather than a final accent - that'd be a different story.

Weighing in.

At first I was freaked. Trying not to get a single extra grain of salt in anything. Well, I learned that it's impossible to do that.

The easiest way to explain to you what I've done and what is working for me is, I've put my salt shaker away. Plain and simple.

When cooking, I just use everything except salt. Mrs. Dash has some good ones.....Penzey's is awesome. Lots of garlic and black pepper and LEMONS. Lemons are my best friend.

At restaurants I've learned not to use the term "sodium" but use the word "salt" instead. The word "Salt" is understood much more.

I never EVER eat a frozen prepared meal. Rarely use prepared anything now. Unless of course, I prepare it.

My BP is regulated now with the help of meds AND low salt eating.

Even though I did eat a BLT yesterday *gasp*

Good luck to your brother! And check out Shambo's site. It's incredible.

The best advice I can think of when going on a "restricted" diet, is to think of it as embracing the healthy foods you can eat. For example, I can no longer eat most fresh fruits due to being on a low acid diet. But I can eat almost all fresh vegetables, which thankfully I love. So I now splurge on all kinds of stuff like fancy lettuce, fennel, fancy potatoes, etc. Since your brother can eat fruits in moderation, I would embrace that and try to get him in the habit of eating fruit, nuts and swiss cheese as a snack. I really like unsalted roasted nuts. Of course those in moderation too, lol!