Get the Salt Out (20 page)

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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.

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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.

B
reakfast 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.