Get the Salt Out (65 page)

Read Get the Salt Out Online

Authors: C.N.S. Ph.D. Ann Louise Gittleman

BOOK: Get the Salt Out
7.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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).

Other books

Nathan's Vow by Karen Rose Smith
Wildcat by Cheyenne McCray
Toby by Todd Babiak
Lethal Misconduct by C. G. Cooper
Persuasion by Martina Boone
Masks by Evangeline Anderson
Scars of the Past by Kay Gordon
An Autumn Dream by Melissa Giorgio
The Outsider by Colin Wilson