Pumping Marvellous

The seasonings aisle at the supermarket can be overwhelming, especially if  you’re trying to find a healthy alternative to salt. There are many seasoning  products on the market and the ways the food industry promotes them can make it  difficult to find a healthy choice.  Sea salt has long been touted as a  healthy alterative to table salt and it’s no surprise that 61% of respondents in  a survey conducted by the American Heart Association believed sea salt to be  low-sodium alternative to table salt. Sea Salt is no better for you than normal table salt.

There are many other products  that are marketed as being healthy alternatives to salt. Commercial “salt  substitutes” are one such product.  Most salt substitutes contain potassium  chloride in place of sodium chloride.  By replacing sodium with potassium  in the chemical structure of salt, food scientists have developed a variety of “salt substitutes” that taste similar to table salt and that can help reduce  overall sodium intake when used in place of table salt.

You might be using a potassium based salt substitute  without realising it. It would be wise to go through your cupboard and  check ingredient labels — if you see potassium chloride listed, the seasoning is  a potassium based salt substitute.

Eat FRESH and manage that SODIUM

This is an excellent piece of advice from Donna Arnett president elect of the American Heart Association. In the excerpt it talks about sodium so what you need to know is the calcualtion that works this through to Salt. Here is the calculation –

“A healthy diet sustains us, but a poor diet can lead to increased blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar levels and weight and put you at heart disease risk.

According to Donna Arnett, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Epidemiology in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health and president-elect of the American Heart Association, diet is only ‘one component of the overall cause of heart disease.’ But, Arnett asserted that it can exert a strong influence.

Sodium also is considered the culprit for the one in three Americans who develop high blood pressure. Sodium attracts water into your cells; the increased fluid raises your blood pressure and subsequently raises your risk of stroke and heart attack, heart failure and death, Arnett says.

Race also plays a role in risk. UAB researchers recently examined the effects of sodium intake by race using data from the ongoing Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke and found a stronger association with death in black participants than whites, says Suzanne Judd, assistant professor of biostatistics at UAB and the study’s lead author.

Blacks with the highest sodium intake (average of 2,600 mg/day) had a 62 percent increased risk of dying, while whites had no increased risk, she said. “This supports the AHA recommendation that there may need to be race-specific sodium guidelines, but everyone should reduce their sodium intake,” Judd says. The AHA has an aggressive sodium goal of 1,500 mg per day for everyone.

First, Arnett said, increase the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat daily, especially the leafy kind. “This provides more potassium, which is associated with lower blood pressure,” Arnett said.

“Fresh is the best source for fruits and vegetables, but canned versions can provide nutrition.” The primary drawback to canned and frozen foods is added sodium. But Arnett offers a solution: “Rinse these foods before cooking to help reduce sodium. Once rinsed, I think they are a great option for people on the go.” Fish also is on Arnett’s list of better food choices. “You should eat fish twice per week; fish are sources of the good fats associated with reduced risk of heart disease,” said Arnett.

When preparing your food, limit saturated fats such as those in butter, hard cheeses and red meats. “Avoid trans fats because they raise your bad cholesterol levels. So read food labels and look for partially hydrogenated oils, which is another name for trans fats,” Arnett says. Fats considered to be suitable for low consumption ? avocados, nuts, olives and olive oil ? are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which can help reduce the cholesterol levels in your blood and lower your risk of heart disease.

A big calorie-causing culprit is fizzy drinks and sports and energy drinks, Arnett says. “The hidden sugars in these beverages are a common cause of weight gain among young people. Limiting yourself to two 12 oz. cans per week to reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes,” Arnett added.” end

Salt / Sodium the hooded claw for Heart FailurePatients part 6

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Salt / Sodium the hooded claw for Heart Failure Patients part 5

Breakfast cereals

Breakfast cereals vary widely in salt content, so read labels carefully. Some of the most popular contain between 250 and 300 milligrams of sodium in a serving, though many people eat double that much at breakfast. And beware the “healthy” label; some of the highest-sodium cereals are those we consider healthiest, such as raisin bran. Kellogg’s Raisin Bran has 340 milligrams per serving ; instant oatmeal has as much as 350 milligrams per serving, depending on the flavor. So READ THE LABEL.

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Salt / Sodium the hooded claw for Heart Failure Patients part 4

Cheese and other dairy products

Salt is used in the making and preserving of many cheeses and cheese products, yet we don’t associate htem as salty. Rich, cheeses like blue cheese and gorgonzola are among the saltiest, all of them coming in between 350 and 500 milligrams per serving. Cheese spreads and dips often have as much as 500 milligrams of salt per serving, as can cheddar cheese. Parmesan, Romano, feta, and many of the other cheeses used in cooking are high in salt. Milk itself has 120 milligrams of sodium per half-cup serving; choose a flavoured chocolate milk instead and the level rises to 150 milligrams. A half-cup serving of a low-fat cottage cheese has twice as much sodium (360 milligrams) as a bag of potato chips!!!
Canned soups, stews, and vegetables –  The Campbell Soup Company made headlines recently by putting the sodium back into some of the company’s canned soups that had previously had the salt content reduced. The reason? Consumers weren’t buying the products because they didn’t taste as good-and that is where the problem is. People are so used to salt that it’s use is endemic in the population. I am a big chef type, well probably more home cook and I haven’t added salt into anything I have cooked in 5 years; why because I don’t need it and I am not addicted to the taste of it. It took about 3 months to wean myself off it but I satyed off it. My cooking style has adapted and when people come around for food they never comment about the blandness as it is not bland and I purposefuly challenge them about this. They are not just being polite they can’t tell the difference.

Many flavors of canned soup, from home-style chicken to simple tomato, contain 700-1,300 milligrams of sodium per serving. French onion soup is one of the worst, with 1,300 mg per serving. Canned beef stew and chili both have 1,000 to 1,200 milligrams per serving, and vegetable soups, like minestrone and split pea, contain 800-1,000 milligrams per serving. It’s also important to realize that a serving is often just half a cup, much less than the average person eats at a sitting. One last surprise lurks in some types of canned vegetables. One can of kidney beans contains 440 milligrams of sodium, and canned tomatoes with spices added can contain up to 600 milligrams of sodium per half cup.

Salt / Sodium The Hooded Claw for Heart Failure – Part 2

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Salt / Sodium the hooded claw for Heart Failure Patients

Hi my name is Chloe I am going to talk to you about the “hooded claw” of the food world for Heart Failure Patients. Over the next week or so you will find information that is crucial to managing salt intake for Heart Failure patients.

Reducing salt intake for Heart Failure Patients

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Does this constitute corporate irresponsibility?

As you may or may not know salt is a major issue in our society and is also a real burden for Heart Failure patients. Many modern day foods have far too much salt added, especially for Heart Failure patients where the recommended daily intake is no more than 2000mg, background salt ( that is salt that naturally occurs in the food we eat) is 1500mg so the tolerance are very low.

So bearing this in mind and the irresponsibe publications of new research poping up all over the place suggesting that a low salt / sodium diet is bad for you I picked up this information published by Forbes on Campbell Soups move to now add salt!

In February 2010, Campbell Soup announced that it would re-formulate over 60% of its condensed soups to reduce the sodium content of 23 of them up to 45% -with high salt diets having been previously linked to cardiovascular disease in medical studies, health advocates were delighted. Last week the company’s
CEO-elect, Denise Morrison, made another announcement, this time a somewhat more alarming one. The company is putting the salt back in. With Campbell’s soup sales sliding in recent times, Morrison believes that lower salt levels have translated to lower taste for their customers, and that the tweaked offerings may have been responsible for the flagging financials. The company hopes to tempt soup-lovers back by increasing sodium levels up to about 650mg per serving (they had been brought down from 800mg to 480mg) in many of the cans in their Select Harvest line.

Campbell’s new strategy appears all the more startling in light of the fact that the US Department of Agriculture’s 2011 Dietary Guidelines  couldn’t be any clearer on the point that, as a nation, we need to step away from the salt shaker. “Virtually all Americans consume more sodium than they need,” it says.

According to research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average American adult currently consumes 3,436 mg of salt a day. With an
estimated 75% of our salt intake coming from processed and packaged foods, the USDA guidelines go on to add: “An immediate, deliberate reduction in the sodium
content of foods in the marketplace is necessary to allow consumers to reduce  sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg or 1,500 mg per day [for those aged 51+, all
African Americans, plus anyone with hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease] now.”

Faced with pressure to ease up on sodium, big players in the food industry, such as Kraft Foods, Heinz and Unilever have responded by recently joining the National Salt Reduction Initiative (NSRI), which aims to slash salt content in retail and foodservice throughout the country by 20% in five years.

Again, next to this, Campbell’s renegade approach seems irresponsible.  Surely the company should continue to encourage a healthier consumer base which, presumably, will stick around longer to enjoy its products? This is especially since research shows that our perceptions of saltiness and taste intensities can change over a relatively short period of time. In plain speak, this means that if Campbell’s perseveres with the lower salt offerings and convinces its customers to do the
same, diners will quickly grow accustomed to the more modestly seasoned soups. (This is very true)

But, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn Campbell’s new strategy. After all, recently published pro-sodium studies suggest that food
manufacturers across the board should actually be following Campbell’s lead. Contrary to everything we’ve been previously fed, a high-profile
scientific paper by The Cochrane Library, came to the following straight-stalking conclusion: “cutting down on the amount of salt has no clear benefits in terms of likelihood of dying or experiencing cardiovascular disease”.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The paper, published last week in the Journal of Hypertension, reviewed seven studies, which in total included 6489 participants, a number which, the authors
say, provides sufficiently reliable results. The study – led by Professor Rod Taylor from Peninsula College of Medicine and Denistry in the UK, found no
evidence to support the theory that a reduction in salt intake decreases cardiovascular disease or all-cause mortality in those with normal or raised blood pressure. Astonishingly, it also concluded that salt reduction could be detrimental to health. In people with congestive heart failure, salt restriction actually increases the risk of death from all causes, the paper claims. (be very very careful of this statement)

If this all sounds a little sketchy to you, especially since salt has been demonized no end until now, there’s more research to support the idea that we  should give the tasty mineral a break. You might recall a perplexing study published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It surmised that people who eat lower amounts of sodium are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease and that, among those with normal blood pressure, sodium intake didn’t lead to high blood pressure.

Certainly these pro-salt studies have created something of a media frenzy, and they have amassed critics aplenty. The May study was so riddled with problems and flaws it prompted Harvard researchers to deem its conclusions as “most certainly wrong.” The main complaint was that most of the participants in
the study were in their early 40s when the research began, and were only tracked for about eight years. This entailed that the population was too young to
reliably determine how sodium intake could impact their long-term health. As for the Cochrane Review, medical experts are equally unimpressed. The chief criticism is that one of the studies involved patients with heart failure, meaning the results aren’t relevant to the general population. Participants also only reduced their sodium intake by fairly moderate increments, and were followed for relatively short periods, again, not enough to see a significant difference in their long-term health. To further lessen the credibility of the study, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hypertension, Michael Alderman who accepted the paper, once worked as a consultant for the Salt Institute.
As you might suspect, this Virginia-based advocacy group touts the benefits of higher sodium consumption while warning efforts to cut salt could be disastrous
for the population’s wellbeing.

Indeed the Salt Institute couldn’t be more delighted with the recent research, as well as Campbell’s announcement of it’s intention to up salt
levels. “The scientific evidence is overwhelming,” said Lori Roman, President of the Institute, clearly unconvinced of the criticism lobbed at the pro-sodium
studies. “[I]t is time for the government to cease its costly and wasteful efforts to reduce salt consumption until it can conclusively prove a tangible
benefit for all consumers.”

But before you throw caution to the wind, and open up that bag of salt and vinegar chips in anticipation of Campbell’s tastier potages, you might want to
consider another study that was also published last week, this time in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers from the Centers of Disease
Prevention and Control concluded that Americans who consume a diet high in sodium and low in potassium have a 50% increased risk of death from any cause,
and have twice the risk of death from heart attacks. The group found that high salt intake was associated with a 20% increased risk of death, while high
potassium intake was associated with a 20% decreased risk of dying. Also, don’t forget the link between a salt-heavy diet and high blood pressure is relatively
well established, even the Cochrane Review couldn’t undermine this widely accepted relationship.

So where does this leave Campbell’s? In light of the lack of conclusive evidence linking sodium to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, is the company justified in increasing salt? Perhaps the assertion that customers should have the right to choose whether they consume higher or lower levels of
salt is in fact a fair and balanced one? After all, Campbell’s still plans to include a number of low-sodium options among its soup offerings. And let’s face
an unfortunate reality; consumers are less concerned about salt in their diet than they are about other nutritional no-no’s such as fat and sugar. The bottom
line is that fat and sugar makes us well, fat, and there’s no escaping this truth. We read it in magazines; we see it on TV, and even posters on the subway
shout about the blubberizing impact of sugary, fatty foods. Salt, on the other hand, doesn’t effect our appearance in the same way  – although admittedly, it
can lead to bloating and water retention, but not everyone is cognizant of this.
So while we might compromise on taste to save our figures, we don’t make the same allowances to save our insides. Indeed, Campbell’s incoming CEO
Denise Morrison was explicit in her analysis that sodium reduction is not a priority USP for many consumers. Is her priority for her customers health not important?

Campbell’s big mistake might have been boasting about its salt reduction initiatives. Change doesn’t always sell. Remember when Coca-Cola launched New Coke in 1985, and accompanied the re-jigged recipe with a massive marketing campaign? The altered drink was a huge failure and the original formula had to be reinstated. Who knows, had Coca-Cola kept the change quiet maybe we’d all be drinking New Coke now. Similarly, had Campbell’s gone about reducing salt in small increments and not made a lot of noise about it, maybe its consumer base wouldn’t have even noticed. Unilever found in a 2007 study in the Netherlands that when consumers were given two identical samples of Lipton Cup-a-Soup and were told one had 25% less sodium, the majority of respondents said the soup labeled as low-salt tasted inferior.

Salt and Heart Failure

Salt and Sodium labelling

As part of Salt awareness week we thought we find out what is being done to highlight and make reading salt and sodium contents easier on packaging. This information comes from the Food Standards Agency.

“ The Food Standards Agency published details of qualitative research exploring people’s preferences and understanding of the way in which salt and sodium information is presented on food labels. People taking part in the research were keen for labelling of salt or sodium to be as clear and consistent as possible and preferred the use of the term ‘salt’ on food labels. This was because it was most familiar to them and because they did not necessarily understand the relationship between salt and sodium.

While there was understanding of the health consequences of eating too much salt, there was little awareness that sodium is the part of salt that can cause raised blood pressure if eaten in large quantities.

This piece of research was carried out to help inform the UK’s discussions in Europe and internationally on the best way to label foods.

Head of Nutrition at the Food Standards Agency, Clair Baynton, said: ‘Too much salt in the diet can raise blood pressure, which increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. As a nation we are eating too much salt and here in the UK, a lot of work is going on to reduce salt in food products.

‘Our research highlights that although people have generally got the message that too much salt is bad for health, it’s not always easy for them to check how much they are eating as labelling can be confusing.’

This research was carried out by thepeoplepartnership and used a combination of in-depth interviews and group discussions. Fieldwork took place in six locations across the UK from 18 to 30 November 2009.

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Carers 12 Days of Christmas Special – Day 6

Food is ever so important – you are what you eat

Stress can affect eating habits in different ways. Some people will eat anything they can get their hands on, particularly carbohydrates. Others tend to go into a “starvation” mode and not eat much at all. These are both normal reactions, as our bodies behave differently when we are chronically stressed. However, neither of these responses will help relieve stress or contribute to a healthy body and mind.

Maintaining good nutrition habits is tough for anyone, but it’s especially difficult for a carer. Often your loved one is on a special diet or has a particularly selective appetite. There may be other family members to feed, and your time and energy are certainly limited. But you’ve still got to eat correctly. Good nutrition is a habit that you have to consciously cultivate. It begins at the supermarket. Learn to read labels. Start buying foods that benefit your body and mind. If you don’t bring it home, you can’t eat it.

You can train yourself to eat right, one food at a time. Your goals should include foods low in saturated fat, transfat, cholesterol and sodium (salt), and lots of fruit and vegetables every day, whole-grain/high-fiber foods, lean meats, poultry, fish (at least twice per week), and fat-free or low-fat dairy products. You should also use monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Also, cut back on beverages and foods with added sugars and salt. If you’re not going to eat much, at least eat smart. Foods that have a lot of “bang-for-the-buck” include deeply colored fruits and veggies (e.g., spinach, broccoli, carrots, berries and peaches), whole-grain/high-fiber foods (e.g., whole-wheat, oats/oatmeal and brown rice), oily fish (e.g., salmon, trout and herring).

Vegetables and fruits are high in vitamins, minerals and fiber — and they’re low in calories. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables may help you control your weight and reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease by lowering your blood pressure. Eat deeply colored vegetables and fruits because they tend to be higher in vitamins and minerals than others.

Related articles

• Carers 12 Days of Christmas Special – Day 6 (pumpingmarvellous.com)
• Eating Your Way to Heart Health (everydayhealth.com)
• Helpful Hints to Instill Healthy Nutrition Habits for Children (prweb.com)