Shaun, We try to keep our sodium between 1000 to 1500 mg/day, so I know where you're coming from! It's tough at first, but we found that after about 4-6 weeks your taste buds start to change and the lower salt food starts tasting much better. So if you've just been doing this for a month or so, there's light at the end of the tunnel. You asked about eating out: that's tough but not impossible, even if your budget doesn't run to higher end restaurants that will essentially cook anything you ask for, from scratch. We've had some luck with Macaroni Grill (but you have to be kind of emphatic with your server about your request.) They may sort of think you're just being picky, not that you have a serious medical need. In our case it is literally a matter of life or very serious consequences. My DH is the one with the restriction, but I follow it, too, for solidarity and simplicity. He usually makes the request, then I follow up with clear statement to the server about how important it is that nothing be pre-seasoned. Or if it has been already (vegetables are a big prob here as they are parcooked in salty water during prep) I ask that the food be rinsed very well in running water then briefly reheated. You also can usually expect that you're getting a bit of left-over seasoning from previous food cooked on the same hot top or grill. We just make allowances for that. We never eat restaurant bread as as it is very high in salt - often higher than other commercial breads. This is because most "restaurant-made" breads are actually from commercial mixes where salt has a role in ingredient shelf life and simplified gluten-handling at the restaurant. If we don't know about the bread, we just ask that it not come to the table. Baked potatoes, though naturally low in salt can be high if they are salt-baked, so ask about that. Pizza and pasta sauces ar pretty much out, too. (Except for homemade, of course.) And almost all sauced dishes are too complex to parse and usually loaded with fats, as well. We save those kind of dishes for at-home cooking where we can control the sodium. For instance, I make Pad Thai at home, but would never risk it in a restaurant. However, grilled chicken breast, or steak, or broiled fish are good bets. Plain salads (sans dressing and croutons) are usually do-able. Vegs. that are not parcooked are OK, too. We don't restaurant desserts for other reasons, so that's not an issue for us. If it was, i think we'd ask for it in a take-away container and eat it at home in smaller quantities. For chain restaurants when traveling, we've had excellent success at Ruby Tuesday's. They are invariably pretty accomodating about our needs and their salad bar is vast and allows one to chose. We also make a point of speaking to the manager after the meal to praise their flexibility; it's apparently a corporate policy to meet low-sodium requests with equanimity. And as a rule that works. Are you aware of the several excellent very low sodium cookbooks? I can post some names of ones I've found useful, if you need them. I'm sure you realize by now that what "normal" people consider low sodium is way over the top when you're on a medically necessary low sodium diet. I am on a nagging campaign to get the big cooking mags to lower their recipes' sodium content. Fine Cooking at least posts the sodium content in the back of their mag. Cook's Illustrated still has their head in the sand and some of the recipes are absurd (even for people with no sodium restrictions.) Are you listening, Cook's Illustrated? Get with the program! I noticed that there was mention of Morton's Lite Salt. Be sure your doc OK's that for you. People on medical salt restrictions often can't use that safely because of the higher potassium levels. Sorry! For household salt, I use Diamond Crystal Kosher salt. It's 290 mg for each quarter teaspoon. About half of what ordinary table or Morton's Kosher is. It's not that it's less salty -salt is salt - it's just that texture makes it fluffier, so less sodium when measured by volume. And the larger volume makes it easier to measure and control. I also use a tiny scooch of Maldon Sea Salt, as a finisher just before serving on some things. Again its crystalline structure makes it different, and I think adds a useful "hit" of saltiness, even at tiny quantities. After endlessly fiddling around with my regular set of measuring spoons trying measure teeny quantities accurately, I found a set of tiny scoops (with silly cute-sy names) that I have calibrated so I can add 25-50 mg of salt accurately. And accuracy is important when you're banging up against a firm limit that isn't just your taste buds. (And as an aside if I know we're planning to eat out in the evening, or while traveling I double down on the salt restriction earlier in the day to make sure we have room for a bit of a splurge later-or restaurant food that isn't what it seems.) Early on I was pretty intensely focused, but after a couple of years, I've relaxed a bit and some very salty things are regularly served here, just in very small quantities and/or well-balanced with other things. Our diet rules are also much more complex than simple salt restriction because of other medical/diet issues, so I have had to learn where to be flexible and where to find ways to make food inviting and tasty. After all you'll starve to death faster than hypertension will kill you if you got so bummed out about your food that you stopped eating it with relish. I was too scared to try this at first and probably too rigid about the rules and not in a good way, according to my DH! As for specific (tasty) prepared products with lower-than-expected salt levels: I can share some that I've found, but maybe we should start a new thread so others trying to find the info can access it easily. I spent so much time in my supermarket peering at label after label that I eventually attracted the manager who thought I was doing something nefarious. And I've found that even on familar products that you're used to using you need to re-check the label when you buy new containrs as the companies often reformulate the products and upping the salt level is a favorite trick. If you find that be sure to call and give 'em a piece of your mind about it! We do use some prepared/convenience foods, but we choose them very carefully and often divide an entree into two portions and add it to a big salad and home-cooked veg. to fill out the meal. Some days you just need the convenience factor. Some, but by no means all, of the Annie's brand of lower sodium products pass muster. A few prepared foods have separate sauces that you can add after cooking in the MW. If they've got the sodium levels broken out by with and without sauce, then you will likely find that adding half or less of the sauce brings you in at a "low-enough" level for use. There's one brand of exceptionally tasty canned tuna with only 25 mg of sodium/serving. (Without exception so far all of the no-salt-added tuna we've tried was ghastly.) The problem with our fave brand of tuna is that it's pricier, but then since we cook mostly from scratch I figure it evens out as scratch cooking is sooo much cheaper. Eden makes no-salt added canned beans in many varieties, which are quite good in a pinch (not as good as home-cooked, though.) Muir Glen has an ever-growing line of canned tomato products with no added salt that are great (love, love love the fire-roasted no-salt-added stuff!) Both Pacific and Imagine aseptic-packed soups have low(er) sodium versions that are quite good (still 300 mg/400mg per 1 cup, though). I keep some on hand, always. Try all your available broth and stock options to find one that you like. The quality of the low-salt versions varies, as does how low is low. Try ethnic chinese and oriental markets for the lowest-sodium soy and nouc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce) versions. They are always labeled in comprehensible ways, even if just in chinese or japanese. Don't get too discouraged by the "you can't make bread without salt" common knowledge. Yes, you can, but it usually takes some fiddling around with each recipe to hit the sweet spot. Sometimes a lot of fiddling, and wasted ingredients. I also find that low-salt cheese is not great, so we reserve some of our salt "allowance" for regular, even high salt cheese when it's called for. As an example I often grate Piave Vechio (a very high salt 560 mg/oz, extremely high flavor) cheese over a plain jane salad or soup or pasta. I use a microplane grater and find that a very small quantity makes a huge cheesy taste, often adding only 50-100 mg to the overall dish, but to great effect. Cottage cheese is problematic: the no salt added stuff is too bland, but the regular stuff too high. I solve that by buying both and mixing by volume. Half no-salt and half regular comes in right on the money. (BTW, Nancy's brand makes a fantastic cultured - very tangy - type of cottage cheese. That also can be added to the commoner no-salt stuff to jazz it up.) You also need to watch simple stuff like ordinary frozen without sauce vegetables. Some have silly amounts of sodium added. For instance one big brand (Birdseye???) has has peas with both 90 mg/serving and 0 mg/serving. The 0 mg version is just fine - not sure why you need the extra salt anyway. Finally, I found that it was always useful to keep a supply of tasty, reliable easy to fix things on hand so that a recipe adjustment that flops, or a long day with no thought to dinner isn't a catastrophe. That's my version of convenience foods. L

Hello, Im writing this so others can avoid MY awful experience with this Âjump start 48 Âhour diet, sometimes called the Hollywood Diet. ItÂs Monday now and IÂm almost feeling normal again, but still very weak. Ever have stomach flu? ThatÂs what this was like. Saturday morning, full of determination, I mixed up a batch of the WomanÂs World recipe of the diet. Since it had more protein, it sounded more healthy than the Hollywood version of the Âjump-start recipe. Besides, I donÂt care for papayas or apricots, which may be the source of the bitter tang some users have complained about. It tasted just FINE, and I had my first shake at around 10 am, then went about my usual weekend activity, which was sewing. Not too strenuous. I worked steadily with a big container of water next to me, taking sips off that to keep hydrated as many have recommended. When I got hungry, I drank another fruit shake. Of course I used the toilet a lot more with all this liquid, but IÂd expected that, after all, I was trying to clean out my system. In articles IÂd read about this sort of diet IÂd learned our bowels can hold from 2-7 pounds of wasteÂwhich accounts for most of the Âweight lost in this diet. Of course, once youÂre back on regular food afterwards it all comes back, a little detail the TV infomercials leave out. Around 4pm my dogs came in and began staring at me. Not normal behavior for them. They are very perceptive pooches and their message was clear: ÂAre you feeling bad? They were right. I was feeling woozy, and had a headache, which I attributed to the sudden diet shift. I drank more water and decidedÂafter sewing a long seam up the wrong wayÂthat I needed to compromise on this. My weakness was such that I couldnÂt sit up to sew anymore, so I lay down on the bed and thought things over. As in the Slim Fast diet the idea of having one sensible meal for dinner made sense. So I had one (with some Tylenol) and felt a little better, but not much. I found I was too weak to sit at the sewing machine even then, and my trips to the toilet were becoming more frequent and cramp-ridden. Ditto for my between-runs rests. I dozed the rest of the slow evening, lurching up from bed to deal with bouts of out-and-out diarrhea, cursing myself for being so stupid. I got NO sleep that night, only catching short, shallow dozing between stumbling to the bathroom every 30 to 40 minutes, and groaning with cramp. Throughout all that my little dogs snuggled close, giving what comfort they could. I had chills, then the sweats like a fever victim, terrible cramps, and a thunderous headache that no amount of Tylenol would fix. I kept drinking water, knowing that if I didnÂt keep hydrated IÂd only feel worse. Finally I took a dose of Emetrol for the nausea. Exactly 30 seconds later I was bent over the tub with an uncontrolled case of the heaves, and remained there in abject misery for the next half hour. I crept back to bed, extremely weak, and went back to the chills, cramps, and sweats routine for the rest of the night. In the morning I still had the awful headache, and the shakes kept me from standing upright for more than a couple minutes. The cramps had abated, so I felt certain I was on the down side of the bell curve. I continued drinking water, and in the afternoon managed to keep down a couple finely chewed crackers. I remained bed-ridden the whole of the day. By evening I had dry toast and an egg. So, there it was: the 24-hour give yourself stomach-flu symptoms diet, and, NO, I did NOT lose ANY weight. The only jump-start to my system darn near burned out the battery, leaving me incapacitated for 2 days, weaker but wiser on the third. (And full of gas!) I will mention the one time I did lose weight a couple years back. I reduced my calorie intake to 1000-1200 a day, stopped drinking caffeine and anything fizzy (including diet fizzy drinks) and increased my walking to a mile a day. I lost 30 pounds. ItÂs the same old story, the quick miracle fads just donÂt work. I was able to stick to this one for only 8 hours before my body violently rebelled against the abuse. Had I stuck to it for 48 as the regime calls for IÂd have landed in a hospital with a bunch of health care workers shaking their heads over me, too polite to ask ÂWhat were you THINKING???? So you think about it now. As for meÂIÂm going back to the old routine. ItÂs slower, but more certain and 200% healthier. Pat Elrod

Mechanical soft diet refers to the consistancy mainly of the meat. Mechanical soft foods are very well cooked with lots of gravy or sauce for the meats. Meats can be cut up finely or med fine like ground beef. Also meat can be chopped in chunks. It will depend on the persons degree of chewing/ swallowing difficulty. Meats should be sliced very thin and always have gravy or sauce with them to aid in swallowing. Any foods can be eaten on a mechanical soft diet as long as they are cooked very tender and the meat is the proper consistency. If needed you can puree the meat or even all foods. Add nectar, juice, gravy, broth, milk or other calorie dense liquids to foods to puree.Even pureed foods can vary in consistancy. There are generally 3 consistancies used: pudding constancy, nectar consistancy and thin consistancy (almost the consistancy of milk). Some speech therapists also recommend using applesauce consistancy. The best thing to do is consult a speech therapist and your doctor if the person is having swallowing problems so a modified barium swallow test can be given. This test will assist in determining the proper consistancy of foods/liquids to avoid choking and aspiration. I hope I helped. Good luck to you. Debra Truncale, RD, LD

My father as serious gout and will need more information about what to eat than the hospital has provided. Do you have any easy recipes for him?