Home-cooked meals with less salt

With more people staying at home these days, there’s more opportunity to prepare homemade meals. Although home-cooked meals tend to be much lower in salt than what you’d get from a restaurant, you still need to be careful, says Liz Moore, a dietitian at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Why worry about salt? Most Americans consume far too much sodium, which raises blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. On average, we consume around 3,200 milligrams (mg) per day. That’s about 30% more than is recommended by the federal dietary guidelines, which advise people to limit their daily sodium to 2,300 mg. And it’s more than twice the target suggested by the American Heart Association of 1,500 mg per day. National surveys suggest that fewer than 10% of Americans achieve that lower target. Even dietitians admit that goal can be hard to meet, given how much salt is found in many popular convenience foods, such as deli meats, pizza, and snacks. Prepared meals from supermarkets and nearly all restaurant dishes are also very salty, It’s good to aim low “I encourage people to aim for 1,500 mg a day. Even if they only cut their sodium to around 2,000, that’s still a big improvement,” says Moore. Making meals at home using mostly fresh, unprocessed ingredients is the key. To help her patients, she created the BIDMC CardioVascular Institute’s Hungry Heart Cookbook, which features dozens of low-sodium recipes th...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cooking and recipes Health Healthy Eating Hypertension and Stroke Source Type: blogs