Blood Pressure and Low-Salt Diet

Many of us ask if it is really worth going on a low-salt diet. This is debatable and reducing salt alone is not enough in reducing high blood pressure - you must reduce the amount of fat in your diet as well as reducing the amount of sodium. This is very important although generally neglected feature of any effective diet for blood pressure control because, as everyone knows who has actually followed a low-sodium diet (rather then merely written about it or researched it on other people), for the first few weeks all food tastes like a mixture of cardboard and wallpaper paste and you then tend to eat more fat in an attempt to make it taste of something. As fat certainly raises low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (the so-called "bad" cholesterol) and therefore the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, you stand to gain nothing at all by reducing your salt intake if at the same time you also raise your fat intake.

If you follow a moderately low-sodium diet and if you have very mildly raised blood pressure in the diastolic range 90-100 mmHg, you may not need any medication. If it is much higher than this, you may need lower doses, or fewer different drugs, that you would on your usual diet. You will never eat out again, because if you really are sticking to a low-sodium diet, all restaurant food will taste unbearably salty. Speaking as a food addict, I doubt if the game's worth the candle; so much deprivation for such a trivial result is simply not worth it. But people differ. There's certainly no harm in trying, providing you don't find yourself eating more fat.

If you decide to go on a low-sodium diet, the first step is to stop adding salt to your food at the table and then gradually to reduce the amount you use in cooking. When you've done this, you next go on to consider the foods you normally eat and work out which you should not eat more of and which food you should avoid. Foods can be divided into three groups: low sodium foods, which you can eat as often as you like; "middling" sodium foods, which you can eat sparingly; and high salt containing foods, which should be avoided altogether. Low sodium foods include: all fresh fruits; all fresh or home-cooked vegetables (but not cooked with cooking salt or table salt); rice and pasta; and fresh meat, fish and poultry. Examples of "middling" sodium foods are: some breakfast cereals (unsalted porridge, muesli, shredded wheat, sugar puffs, puffed rice and wheat or oats); some milk and milk products (up to half a pint of skimmed or semi-skimmed milk a day, yoghurt, ice cream, cottage cheese); eggs (not more than two a week); unsalted butter, margarine or spreads; and unsalted nuts. Some of the more common high salt foods are: smoked and tinned fish; most snack and fast foods like salted nuts, pork scratchings, Bombay mix, pizzas, pork pies, peanut butter, takeaway burgers and fried chicken; most milk products such as evaporated or condensed milk, salted butters and spreads, all cheese except cottage cheese; soups especially canned or packet soups; curries; savory biscuits and pastries; dried fruits; and Chinese food.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to bloodpressure-guide.com Blood Pressure