Like a thief in the night it sneaks up on you. Here you are living the good life, so you thought. Perhaps raising your family or just starting out on the threshold of a very productive career. Then the unthinkable happens, your doctor tells you that you have high blood pressure or hypertension, a more sophisticated word for the same condition. The doctor may suggest medication and/or diet. You will have to restrict your sodium and work diligently on keeping your weight in control. Congratulations, consider yourself lucky. Lucky that is because you have found out in time and can control your blood pressure by following your doctors advise.
Hypertension-high blood pressure-is a killer. Undetected and untreated it can contribute to heart disease, kidney failure, stroke and sometime blindness. Unfortunately hypertension goes untreated because symptoms are mild or never surfaces enough to warrant attention. The condition is often detected in a routine physical examination. Very often, test will indicate borderline levels or slight elevations from previous testing. If that occurs, the physician will suggest a change of lifestyle and diet. But unfortunately the physician’s suggestions often go unheeded as some refuse to believe the serious of this disease.
There are many new and easier to tolerate medication on the market today for the treatment of hypertension and with proper diet, monitored by your physician, you can certainly lead a normal and active life.
Most medical professionals will agree that weight loss will have a beneficial effect on blood pressure for those 10 percent or more above their ideal weight. Most will agree that reduced sodium in your diet will not affect everybody’s blood pressure, but reduced sodium is one of the recommendations in controlling hypertension.
Just where is sodium? Eliminating the use of table salt in cooking will not completely eradicate the sodium problem in our diets. Unfortunately sodium is present in preservatives, emulsifying agents and most chemicals used to process foods today. It is certainly desirable to check food labels for the amount of sodium in a single serving. The brand new RDA-Recommended Daily Allowance-that was announced in January for everyone is 1,500 milligrams (mg) per day to improve cardiovascular health and reduce the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease and stroke. That number previously was a recommendation for those with hypertension, diabetes or kidney disease as well as African Americans and adults age 51 or older.
This is not going to be an easy task for anyone today and I strongly advise you to read the dietary information in everything you buy and concentrate on the number of servings that is used to calculate the milligrams of sodium in a product. For example a very popular brand of potato chips list 170 mg of sodium in a 1 ounce serving of 15 chips. Another brand list 140 milligrams of sodium in a 1 ounce serving of 11chips. If both the sodium count and the serving size were not checked the information could be misconstrued.
You best bet is to buy salt free or low salt products and still check the sodium content and the serving size. Eliminate added sodium in your cooking and lower the amount recommended in a recipe when baking. Get back in the kitchen so you can control the fat, sodium and sugar in you cooking and make eating out a special occasion. To enhance the flavor of your cooking add herbs and spices, adjusting or increasing the amount to your particular taste. To help you out I am repeating some blends that I offered many years ago in my newspaper column. But before I do, I want to share some creative cooking ideas from my readers.
If you recall in my last posting I invited readers to send in some of their creative ideas from their cooking endeavors. I received some wonderful feed back about the photo’s that were displayed and I would love to keep this going. So if you have some cute ideas please share them it is fun to see and I am sure they will inspire someone to try to create them. A bride to be e-mailed me to me how much she enjoyed the strawberry favors and hoped she can find someone to create them for her rehearsal dinner.
Sporting events have been on everyone’s mind these past weeks with March Madness. The basketball cake created by Christine from Connecticut served both a birthday party cake for her nine-year-old son whose team just finished 2nd place in their tournament.
With the opening baseball games last week the Yankee Stadium cake created by Suzie from Boston was used to celebrate the 25th birthday of Suzie’s boyfriend Justin and also the Yankees two wins. If you look closely you can see that the pitcher on the mound has a photo head of her significant other. Suzie it looks like you really enjoy being creative in the kitchen. In her e-mail Suzie wrote that she had to get permission from her Dad, who is a diehard Red Sox,s fan to make a replica of Yankee Stadium. How sweet is that?
A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JUSTIN AND A BIG THANK YOU TO SUZIE-KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AND I THINK YOU WILL BE A KEEPER!!!
Salt Less Salt
3 tablespoons each dried parsley, marjoram, basil and thyme
4 1/2 teaspoons each rosemary, paprika and onion powder
Grind all to a fine consistency and place in a jar with a tight fitting lid and store in a cool dark place.
Italiano Blend
1 tablespoon dried oregano, crushed
1 tablespoon dried basil, crushed
1 ½ teaspoons onion powder
1-teaspoon garlic powder
1-teaspoon pepper
In a small bowl combine ingredients and spoon into a shaker with lid, cover and store in cool dark place.
What a Kick Blend
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons dry mustard
1-½ teaspoons ground cumin
1-½ teaspoons ground allspice
1-teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground red pepper
Prepare the same as Italiano Blend. I suggest that you use empty spice bottle that have a shaker lid as well as a tight fitting top. Remember herbs are supposed to enhance food, not over power it. Experiment.
Healthy Cooking for Today Classics 