These days it is getting tougher and tougher to create a healthy eating meals diet. Half, if not more than half the food we eat comes out of tins. Even in the case of home cooked foods, ingredients such as tomato paste, garlic paste, ginger paste, etc. is usually sourced from tins. After reading the label, you might assume the food is healthy and fit to be a part of your daily food planner but remember, such packaged and tinned foods including soups already contain more salt than we require. Watch any TV show on cooking recipes and you see the chef or the presenter being quite liberal with the salt. When we consume salt, we must remember that along with it we also end up consuming a host of chemicals that are mixed in the salt to ensure it stays dry and free flowing. Many of our friends eat veggie salad recipes believing them to be healthy. Ordinarily they would have been right except for the salt that goes in it.
So let us examine the easy healthy eating diet and the effect of excessive salt.
According to the USDA and nutritionists, we should not exceed 2000 mg of sodium per day. The ideal quantity of sodium in our healthy eating diet is half that figure. A single teaspoonful of salt packs 2,400 mg of sodium. We also need to remember that salt is present naturally in many of the foods we consume. Preferably, therefore our healthy eating diets should not contain any salt in addition to that which is naturally present.
Excess Sodium leads to:
• Blood pressure
• Enlarged heart
• Heart ailments
• High water retention
• Kidney stones
• Ulcers
• Heartburns
• Osteoporosis
• Gastric cancers etc
An obese person dying of a heart attack is common enough, but we also often hear of apparently healthy looking individuals dying of a heart attack and we wonder what caused it. Thanks to all the chemicals that somehow or the other find their way into our Daily diet meal plan, humans are anyways susceptible to all the above conditions. However, if we consume excessive salt, then it would be like giving providence a loaded dice to play against us. So, a healthy eating diet and healthy heart recipes is one that uses no salt or uses it sparingly.
Depending on the quantum of salt we used to previously consume, a healthy eating for weight loss with no additional salt, takes at most a couple of weeks to get used to. A big bonus with a zero salt healthy eating diet is that your taste buds are automatically more sensitive and you find that you can taste each flavor in the food, i.e. you begin to really enjoy your meals.
Healthy eating diets with zero salt are in reality not as big a challenge as you might imagine. Adding herbs and spices not only enhances the aroma and flavor of the food, it effectively masks the lack of salt. So switch over or tweak your healthy eating diet at the earliest. You have your health to gain and diseases to lose.
Ed Stephens started life as a Scientist and this passion has evolved into a focus on making a difference to people’s lives, leveraging proven science based solutions. First with the emphasis on providing a one-stop diabetes solution store for the prevention & management of Type 2 diabetes with www.TypeFreeDiabetes.com and now with the launch of a dietitian-designed line of microwaveable, portion control dinnerware made in high quality porcelain material, now available at www.PrecisePortions.com. Ed remains committed to helping lives in these small ways and who knows what’s the next adventure up his sleeves. Stay tuned!
Check out also for Foods for a healthy diet and Diabetic Menu Planner
