Five Ways to Eat Your Way to Lower Sodium
Registered dietitian Grant Itomitsu gives easy tips to help you get started and stay on course.
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What is blood pressure?
Blood pressure is the force of blood moving through your arteries as it carries oxygen and other nutrients to every cell in your body. Blood pressure is given in two numbers: the first (top) is your systolic pressure, the force when your heart beats. The second (bottom) is the diastolic pressure, which measures the force when your heart rests between beats.Normal blood pressure is 120/80 or below. If your numbers are higher than these but less than 140/90, you are pre-hypertensive. If your blood pressure is 140/90 or over, it’s considered high.
What does this mean? If your blood pressure is high, you are stressing your heart and arteries. Over time, this raises your risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and other serious conditions, especially if you already have other risk factors such as high cholesterol or a family history of high blood pressure, or if you drink alcohol or smoke.
The good news? High blood pressure is easily controllable—and even preventable. Healthy eating, regular exercise, good rest, and an effective way to manage stress are all recommended. For a specific plan for your blood pressure level, check with your doctor.
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Readings and Links
- American Heart Association: What Is High Blood Pressure?
- Order The DASH eating plan—Your Guide to Lowering Your Blood Pressure with DASH, from the National Institutes of Health or by calling (301) 592-8573 or (240) 629-3255
Most of the time, we don’t know what causes blood pressure to rise to levels that can damage our bodies and even kill us. But we do know that eating smart can play a key role in bringing blood pressure down to healthier levels.
As a registered dietitian at Kuakini Health System, Grant Itomitsu helps patients start new lives after a health crisis by weaning them off high-sodium diets. As an instructor at Kapiolani Community College, he contributed to A DASH of Aloha: Healthy Hawaii Cuisine and Lifestyle.
DASH stands for Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension. It shifts the focus from counting every calorie and milligram of salt to eating well with a balanced, healthy diet. In DASH of Aloha, KCC’s culinary department created more than 70 vibrant, tantalizing recipes using fresh local ingredients. You can find the cookbook at bookstores or online.
Understand where your sodium is coming from.
According to Itomitsu, about 75 percent of the sodium we consume is from processed foods, not from salt we add during cooking or from shoyu at the dinner table. Often the culprits are foods we tend to migrate to, like SPAM, Portuguese sausage, saimin, and even grain products like breads and cereals, which can have more sodium than processed peanuts.Many foods that are canned, prepackaged or cured contain higher amounts of sodium. Frozen foods typically have less—but always check nutrition labels for sodium content.
Choose less processed and more whole, unprocessed foods.
Fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains and fish are more nutrient-dense than things like banana cream pie or pizza pockets, which are calorie-dense. Besides, you’ll taste more natural flavors instead of the additives and preservatives typically found in highly processed foods.If switching to whole foods is too inconvenient or expensive, try cutting back on some prepared foods. For example, by reading food labels you can choose canned vegetables that have lower sodium content, especially if you have hypertension. Look for words like “low sodium” or “sodium free.”
“Throughout the U.S. our sodium intake is pretty high, but in Hawaii we frequently use shoyu, MSG, fish sauces, fish paste. Our sodium intake may likely be even higher,” Itomitsu says. “Some people might be taking in 6,000 or 7,000 mg. of sodium a day, so trying to get them down to the ideal 2,400 mg. a day is unrealistic. Food is not going to have any taste.”
Start with one food, and work down from there.
Identify one or two high-sodium items you eat every day, and work on eliminating one at a time. If you can’t live without your Portuguese sausage, limit yourself to two pieces. “Create a behavior that will last a lifetime,” says Itomitsu. “Slowly get your sodium down from 5,000 mg. to 3,000, then 2,000 mg. It may take awhile, but you will begin notice changes in seven to 10 days, and you’ll realize that some of the foods you used to love are really salty.”Look for options.
Here in Hawaii, we enjoy our breakfast meats. Look for low-salt versions of things like SPAM; even shoyu comes in low-salt varieties. If you can’t find an option that works, cut down your portion size.For seasoning, experiment with fresh herbs, garlic, Tabasco, cayenne, flavored vinegars, lemon, lime, or salt-free herb-and-spice blends like Mrs. Dash: All these have less sodium than salt, shoyu, fish sauce, fish paste (patis) or oyster sauce.
Retrain your taste buds.
Being raised on popular local foods means our tastes are skewed toward salty, according to Itomitsu. “We had a guest chef who’s worked with a lot of fast-food companies,” he says. “In Hawaii, the two things he has to add more of to ensure acceptance of foods are salt and sugar.”Start by tasting some whole vegetables, fruits, grains and proteins with minimal seasoning. “Focus on the flavors coming out of it. That’s the natural flavor,” says Itomitsu. “Fine-dining restaurants just try to enhance these natural flavors and not cover them up with a lot of excess flavorings. When we consume highly processed foods, they come with a lot of salt-laden sauces, such as teriyaki.”
Just as important, taste your food before adding more salt or shoyu at the table. It probably already has enough flavor. Says Itomitsu, “Which would you rather have? Sashimi with a dab of shoyu, or shoyu with a dab of sashimi?”
