Unknown to many, unprocessed, or natural foods already contain sodium chloride sufficient enough for our body’s needs, hence, obtaining salt through natural food is not a problem. It is with the intake of processed foods that our body gets to encounter sodium chloride content that causes high blood pressure problems.
Returning to natural diets is one of the effective solutions in treating or preventing high blood pressure attacks. Accordingly, natural foods would mean anything derived from natural food sources grown from the soil, from trees, or derived from animals without need to add sauces or coatings.
In purchasing food supplies from supermarkets, reading the labels of low-sodium foods can help us determine the processed foods to avoid. An example would be a low-sodium salad dressing that contains 2 milligrams (mg) of sodium and 32 mg of potassium.
If this were to be analyzed further regarding the balance of sodium to potassium content, or in determining its K-factor, the resulting proportion would be 1 mg of salt for every 16 mg of potassium. The prescribed ideal K-factor ratio is 1 mg salt for every 3 mg potassium.
Experts suggest that rather than buy foods with potassium chloride, check the labels for other substitutes like potassium gluconate and potassium bitartrate. Better yet, you can opt for natural or unprocessed foods and use salt substitutes like seasonings from spices and herbs.
Here are some of the processed foods to avoid and why they should be avoided:
1. Cooked cereals with added salt content.
2. Ready-to-eat cereals may have some moderation in sodium but are low in potassium content, hence, the addition of milk, increases the sodium level resulting to further disparity between their ratio. Occasionally, this type of food can be a part of a hypertension sufferer’s diet but other low sodium, high potassium foods should be eaten in order to compensate.
3. Juice drinks that have minimal content as far real juice is concerned. Check the label for artificial flavors and colors as well as its sugary ingredients.
4. Processed meats use high proportions of salt in their preparation. Specifically, avoid processed beef foods like corned beef, beef burgundy, breakfast strips, frozen meatloaf, and frozen or canned sliced beef, Salisbury steak and chipped beef.
Processed pork to avoid includes cured bacon and ham, bacon bits, ham loaf, bacon bits, sweet and sour pork, ham steaks and sausages. Special preparations like frozen veal parmigiana should also be avoided. You should also consider excluding spreads, luncheon meats, franks, bologna, corned beef loaf, barbecue loaf, salami, mortadella, sandwich spreads, Vienna sausage and turkey ham.
5. Seafood are too high in sodium content although some may be eaten occasionally and with caution. Processed seafood however are best avoided since their preparation uses additional salt for processing.
Examples of these processed seafood are deviled crab, crab cakes, crab imperial, canned crab, fish fillets, fillet almondine, fish sticks, canned fish, lobster paste, Newburg lobster, oysters, mussels, clams, sardines and shrimps whether breaded or French fried.
6. Canned soups are definitely processed foods to avoid since most of them contain more than one gram of sodium chloride and less than the desirable level of potassium content. Do not be misled by such information as “no salt content” or “homemade”; such information does not relieve them of their high level of sodium ingredient.
7. Food flavorings with salt. Contain mostly salt blended with other ingredients.
As part of dietary measures that can prevent high blood pressure, it is recommended that the hypertension sufferer’s diet should take into consideration these processed foods to avoid.
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