At a recent check up my doctor advised me that my blood pressure was unhealthily high. There’s lots of factors going into that of course, but one relatively easy step to reduce blood pressure is to reduce your sodium intake. The recommended daily allowance of sodium (RDA) is 2,300 mg. However the average american probably gets 4,000 – 5,000mg. The main culprit is of course processed food. But I don’t just mean pizza’s, and frozen dinners (both guilty). If you eat a bag lunch at work then lunch meat is also a major source of sodium in your diet. On average people put somewhere between 3 and 6 slices of lunch meat in their sandwich. Each slice probably has at least 250mg of sodium in it. That’s 750 – 1,500mg of sodium just from a lunch sandwich and it doesn’t include the bread itself! There’s a solution though. It’s economical, it’s healthy and it actually tastes better. Best of all it’s easy. Go to your local grocery store and purchase boneless, skinless chicken breast (or tenderloin). Make sure it hasn’t been pumped with brine (a common practice now). 3oz of chicken breast (around 6-8 slices of lunch meat) could have as little as 30mg of sodium in it. While you’re at it pick up some sodium free poultry seasoning. Now chop up the chicken into strips, season to taste and grill. Separate the strips into bags (2oz per lunch for however many lunches you want that week) and then freeze them. Simple as that. They taste better than the processed lunch meat, you can stock up and do weeks at a time (I’ve done two months worth before) and you’re cutting hundreds of mg of sodium a day out of your diet. Personally I dropped 2,500mg per week off my diet from this single step. Related articles by Zemanta
You Are What You Eat: Pack your bags for healthy school lunches (westseattleherald.com) Foods That Cause or Lower High Blood Pressure (healthhype.com) High blood pressure a neglected disease in U.S. (msnbc.msn.com) Packaged Foods May Need Salt Limits, CDC Chief Says (Correct) (businessweek.com) Report: US fails to fight high blood pressure (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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