Sodium/potassium

keooek
keooek Posts: 2 Member
Anyone else limited to 2000 of each per day, plus 2000 fluids ?
Need some recipes. Like Chinese , Thai, Mexican.
Particularly looking for low sodium bread to make in a breadmaker. Thanks for the help.

Replies

  • firlena227
    firlena227 Posts: 86 Member
    Are you restricted with your diet because of renal or heart problems? Ideally you should be referred to a dietician who can give you lists of what to eat & whats on the no list if so (obviously ignore this if that's not the issue!) As far as breadmaking goes, you should be fine if you're making it from scratch, just don't add any salt in the mix... might taste different to begin with as there's usually so much salt in the bread we buy, but your tastes will change pretty quickly :)
  • drstratman
    drstratman Posts: 5 Member
    I recently found out bread is high in sodium because the salt is needed to prevent the yeast from continuing to rise. Even the most “healthy” multi-grain breads are high in sodium around 200mg per slice. The Wonder type breads are practically pure carbs and high sodium. You can’t really make your own bread to be low sodium. I have to be on a low sodium diet 1500 -2000 mg a day, and also struggle to find things I can eat. Any frozen food, food in a can, or even some meats like turkey at the deli counter are very high in sodium, and if I ate a small meal using them, I find I at my sodium limit, and then what do you do? Brown rice and pasta are no sodium. As for any salsa, picante, taco sauce, or tomato sauce, very high in sodium. You can use tomato paste which has lower sodium than tomato sauce. Like you, I am struggling to find meals that are low sodium, and I have been cooking from scratch mostly eggs, ground beef and steak, with potatoes and veggies with some cheeset0 stay under. I can make stew on my own with low sodium, and I use the Mrs Dash products for spicing to avoid the salt. Hot dogs, bratwurst, pork loins, even the chicken at the store are all high in sodium. Not sure how you find meat other than beef, that you can get for low sodium. I hope that you are successful in discovering low sodium meals.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
    Do you have a medical reason to restrict your sodium? I personally don't worry about it. I also have low blood pressure so I think I need more salt than normal people. I don't know how to cook any of those cuisines. I can make like tacos and stuff but they're more like, american style, not actual Mexican. I assume you can just reduce salt in whatever seasoning you're using. I'm not sure what else is high sodium about Mexican food.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    edited September 2018
    drstratman wrote: »
    Not sure how you find meat other than beef, that you can get for low sodium. I hope that you are successful in discovering low sodium meals.

    Not sure where you are shopping but all meats have very little naturally occurring sodium. Beef is higher in sodium than poultry

    Buy your meats just butchered, not processed in any way or frozen. The naturally occurring sodium in fresh meat is very low. Chicken is only 50-75 mg per 4 oz serving, but if it is packaged and "water added" it can have over 400 mg. 6 oz of porterhouse steak will have about 120 mg. Pork can be a little higher but something like fresh pork loin is still considered a low sodium food. Shellfish have the highest amount of naturally occurring sodium, as much as deli meats.

    I am not on a low sodium diet but I don't like salty foods. One great find for me had been Boar's Head no salt added deli meats. Turkey breast is 55mg per 2 oz serving and Deluxe Roast Beef is 80 mg. per serving. They have a couple of other reduced sodium but their regular deli meats are similar to other high sodium meats.

    To the OP: buy everything fresh if you can and don't add salt when cooking. You can get "no salt added" canned veggies like tomatoes.

  • ljmorgi
    ljmorgi Posts: 264 Member
    keooek wrote: »
    Anyone else limited to 2000 of each per day, plus 2000 fluids ?
    Need some recipes. Like Chinese , Thai, Mexican.
    Particularly looking for low sodium bread to make in a breadmaker. Thanks for the help.

    I've been on a low-sodium diet since late 2002 due to renal failure and heart failure. When making bread I just leave the salt out of the recipe. (If there was a LOT of salt in the original recipe you might theoretically need to reduce the yeast? but I've never actually done so.)

    The two low-sodium cookbooks I actually own are "Gourmet Cooking Without Salt" by Eleanor Brenner and "The No-Salt Lowest-Sodium Cookbook" by Donald A. Gazzaniga. There's sodiumgirl.com for food blogs, and various hospitals and kidney/heart organizations have recipes on their website. And of course there's good old Google, and as you learn to adjust to low-sodium eating you can adapt recipes as you find them. I do some Chinese(ish) cooking and have found that some of the actual Chinese/Asian brands of things like soy sauce have less sodium than the American versions. You'll be reading a lot of labels.

    Our change was to cut way back on prepackaged foods and do a lot of cooking ourselves. We're much more particular about where and what we eat out (we travel a lot so it's unavoidable). I can't say enough good things about Penzey's Spices and their salt-free blends (and their spices overall), and if there isn't one near you you can order online).

    Good luck, it can be a rough adjustment, but as your tastebuds adapt you won't miss it--and high-sodium foods will eventually become unpalatable.
  • pinggolfer96
    pinggolfer96 Posts: 2,248 Member
    I make sure to get my 2+ grams of sodium in per meal💪🏻

    Not a joke either....
  • drstratman
    drstratman Posts: 5 Member
    Thanks for your post earlnabby, still new to this and tryin' to learn. And very grateful for ljmorgi post.
  • ljmorgi
    ljmorgi Posts: 264 Member
    drstratman wrote: »
    I recently found out bread is high in sodium because the salt is needed to prevent the yeast from continuing to rise. Even the most “healthy” multi-grain breads are high in sodium around 200mg per slice. The Wonder type breads are practically pure carbs and high sodium. You can’t really make your own bread to be low sodium. I have to be on a low sodium diet 1500 -2000 mg a day, and also struggle to find things I can eat. Any frozen food, food in a can, or even some meats like turkey at the deli counter are very high in sodium, and if I ate a small meal using them, I find I at my sodium limit, and then what do you do? Brown rice and pasta are no sodium. As for any salsa, picante, taco sauce, or tomato sauce, very high in sodium. You can use tomato paste which has lower sodium than tomato sauce. Like you, I am struggling to find meals that are low sodium, and I have been cooking from scratch mostly eggs, ground beef and steak, with potatoes and veggies with some cheeset0 stay under. I can make stew on my own with low sodium, and I use the Mrs Dash products for spicing to avoid the salt. Hot dogs, bratwurst, pork loins, even the chicken at the store are all high in sodium. Not sure how you find meat other than beef, that you can get for low sodium. I hope that you are successful in discovering low sodium meals.

    I think it depends what kind of frozen foods you're looking at. We buy frozen vegetables because they're generally very low in sodium unless they have sauces or other additions, and they're handy to put into soups or chilis or rice or whatever. We do occasionally buy low-sodium canned things if we want them specifically. We don't eat much in the way of lunchmeat at home anymore.

    Some cereals can be ludicrously high in sodium. That's the one that really boggles me.