Almost half of US adults have been diagnosed with hypertension, with the main culprit being a high-sodium diet. So how can we avoid being part of that statistic? And what food choices should we be making to keep a low blood pressure?
On this episode of On Nutrition, registered dietitian Laurie Molina describes the DASH eating plan, methods to maintain a low-sodium diet, and the surprising benefits of potassium.
Listen to Less salt, lower blood pressure: Diet advice for hypertension
Read the transcript:
Laurie Molina: If you’re having cottage cheese with fresh fruit in it, say as a meal…
Tara Schmidt: Gross. No, I’m just kidding. I hate cottage cheese in food.
Laurie Molina: You do? Oh no, I love it.
Tara Schmidt: Sorry. Sorry.
Tara Schmidt: This is “On Nutrition,” a podcast from Mayo Clinic where we dig into the latest nutrition trends and research to help you understand what’s health, and what’s hype.
I’m Tara Schmidt, a registered dietitian with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. This episode, hypertension.
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is incredibly common, affecting nearly half of adults in the US. You probably know someone who has hypertension, or maybe you’ve been diagnosed yourself. Which means you probably already know the main cause is a high-sodium diet. How can we avoid being part of that statistic? What choices should we make with our food? And is there a way to reverse hypertension after you’re diagnosed?
Here to help with our hypertension hassles is Laurie Molina, a registered dietitian at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. Laurie has spent her career helping adults of all ages manage their health conditions through their diet, and now she’s here to share that expertise with us.
Hey Lori. Thanks so much for joining us
Laurie Molina: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Tara Schmidt: We’re here to talk about hypertension or high blood pressure. But first, what is blood pressure? What does that look like in the body?
Laurie Molina: It’s actually measuring two forces.
Systolic pressure is measuring the pressure in your arteries when the heart beats and diastolic pressure is the pressure measured in your arteries between heartbeats, so when your heart beats, blood is pushed out into the body and the blood pressure measures how hard the blood flow pushes against the artery walls, so with high blood pressure, there’s an increased pressure, which over time can make it harder for the heart to pump blood through the arteries and to the body.
Tara Schmidt: Okay. And I think most people know that there are two numbers. I feel like120 over 80 is pretty common knowledge as normal blood pressure, but do you wanna break down how those numbers factor into diagnosing high blood pressure?
Laurie Molina: When we’re looking at the different categories of hypertension, we’re looking at both of those numbers. The normal blood pressure is when that systolic pressure, which is the top number, is below 120, and the diastolic pressure, which is the bottom number, is below 80. Then we jump up into the elevated blood pressure, and when we see that, we see the top number is between one 20 to 129, and that bottom number is below 80.
After that is stage one hypertension, and this is when the top number is between one 30 to 1 39, or the bottom number is between 80 to 89. Stage two hypertension is when that top number is 140 or higher, or the bottom number is 90 or higher.
Tara Schmidt: Do you often see high blood pressure and high cholesterol going hand in hand? Obviously, cholesterol is more about the fats in the blood. You’re talking about blood pressure, specifically. Are they a pair or a duo?
Laurie Molina: Yes. Oftentimes they are. Blood pressure and cholesterol are very different. Cholesterol, as you said, is a waxy substance found in the blood. It is necessary to help build healthy cells. But oftentimes, when there’s an imbalance of the type of lipoproteins in our body, they can build up in the arteries and cause plaque.
And this plaque buildup can narrow the artery where the heart has to pump harder, which in turn can raise blood pressure. Also, when you have high blood pressure, there’s damage done to the artery walls from this increased pressure over time, and the longer it’s uncontrolled, the more damage. That happens.
It’s what you would call a vicious cycle — the two adding on to each other, to continue with more plaque buildup and causing heart disease and all of our heart-related complications.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah. We can see now why they’re going hand in hand often in some of our cardiac patients.
Laurie Molina: Right.
Tara Schmidt: Now, there are also different types of high blood pressure or hypertension. Can you explain the difference between primary and secondary hypertension?
Laurie Molina: Yeah, so primary hypertension is what most people have — essentially, an unknown. This is called primary or essential hypertension. When there is a known medical cause, this is known as secondary hypertension, where the high blood pressure is a symptom of another condition.
Some of the examples would be diseases such as diabetes, polycystic kidney disease, Cushing syndrome, thyroid problems, sleep apnea, and obesity. Those would be some examples of the secondary causes of hypertension.
Tara Schmidt: And what are some of the risks of unmanaged hypertension? Sometimes I’ve heard hypertension referred to as a silent killer, which, maybe a little bit dramatic, but people don’t necessarily feel or see symptoms like we do in other chronic diseases. What kind of risks are at play here?
Laurie Molina: If you leave hypertension untreated, it can increase your risk for heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and other conditions, such as developing chronic kidney disease. Some pretty serious stuff.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah, and let’s talk about some of the risk factors that are apparent when it comes to having high blood pressure in the first place.
Laurie Molina: Some other factors that put you at risk of hypertension are your age. Your race, family history, obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, or tobacco use. Excessive alcohol intake and stress…
Tara Schmidt: From a nutrition standpoint, why is salt such a big deal in this conversation of hypertension?
Laurie Molina: One reason is, excess salt in your diet or excess sodium makes your body actually hold on to water, which increases the amount of fluid in your bloodstream. When that happens, you have an increased blood volume, meaning, you have more fluid in your blood, which puts stress on your heart and your arteries.
Tara Schmidt: How much salt is the average American consuming?
Laurie Molina: The number is going to be somewhat frightening. No, I’m just kidding. But the average American intake is about 3,400 milligrams daily. Certainly, with some people consuming much more than that.
Our dietary guidelines tell us that we should be eating no more than 2,300 milligrams of salt in a day, so if you were to take one teaspoon of salt, that would equal about 2300 milligrams. You can see that 3,400 is going to be more than one teaspoon of salt.
Tara Schmidt: What are the most common sources that people are getting their sodium from?
Laurie Molina: You’d be sort of surprised, or at least I was a little bit surprised, that according to the FDA, about 70% of our sodium in our diet is actually coming from packaged and prepared foods, not from adding salt at the table or during the cooking process.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah, we’re going back to the very common topic, ultra-processed foods, not all of which are bad, but many of which are high in sodium.
Laurie Molina: Exactly. Something that I also wanted to add in is fast food. Looking up some of my favorite fast-food restaurants and menu items, I was very surprised to see my favorite salad — over 2,000 milligrams of sodium.
Tara Schmidt: Your salad?
Laurie Molina: Yeah.
Tara Schmidt: When we talk to people about these risks of developing blood pressure and also having it, how do people know if they’re at risk? So should people be like, checking their blood pressure at their local pharmacy, like sticking their arm in that tube? How do we know if there’s an issue here?
Laurie Molina: Right. Well, hypertension is known as a silent killer because there are no symptoms. Well, that’s where screening comes into play, so definitely whenever you go to your primary care physician, asking for a blood pressure reading.
Typically, they state that asking for a reading at least every two years, starting at the age of 18, or if you’re at high-risk, every year. Otherwise, at age 40, you can ask for a blood pressure check every year.
Tara Schmidt: Perfect. And in our episode that was about diabetes, we talked about essentially being able to put diabetes into remission. Is this the same case with high blood pressure? Is it reversible at all?
Laurie Molina: High blood pressure can be prevented, improved — or lessen the need for medication through lifestyle changes.
Tara Schmidt: Managed, right? Not necessarily in remission.
Laurie Molina: That’s my understanding of it. Yes.
Tara Schmidt: Sodium is a huge player in hypertension, and the average American is eating way more of it than they realize — about 3,400 milligrams per day — way more than the teaspoon of salt we’re recommended. And most of the sources of high sodium are unsurprisingly from packaged, prepared, and restaurant foods.
All that salt can cause our bodies to retain more water, putting more pressure on our heart and blood vessels, in a condition known as hypertension. Hypertension is called a ‘silent killer’ because there are usually no symptoms, which is why getting your blood pressure checked regularly is so important. While it can’t exactly be cured or reversed, high blood pressure can often be prevented, improved, or better controlled through diet, which Laurie will tell us about now.
Tara Schmidt: One of the most popular eating patterns that we have pointed to for the last 25 years is the DASH diet — Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is the acronym. Do you want to talk about where that came from and what’s it all about?
Laurie Molina: The Dash Diet is now more commonly referred to as the DASH eating plan. The research started in the 1990s, so it’s been going on for a while now and it was funded by the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, by a team of researchers and health professionals from The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
I looked at a couple of the studies from the NIH, and the first study from 1999 was looking at two dietary patterns.
One that was a typical American diet, enriched with fruits and vegetables, and a combination diet, which we would refer to as the DASH diet. That included being rich in fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, and low in total in saturated fat. Both of those were compared to the typical American control diet, and they actually provided all the foods to the participants.
But they found that both the diet with the added fruits and vegetables and the combination DASH diet, compared to the control diet, showed significantly reduced diastolic blood pressure, though the combination DASH diet was greater.
After that, they did a study in 2001 that looked at different sodium levels. They had three different sodium levels; one at 3,300 milligrams, one at 2,300 milligrams, and one at 1,500 milligrams. And they had these three different sodium levels with a typical American diet or a DASH diet. This study showed that reducing daily sodium decreased blood pressure for participants on either diet, and significantly lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure — but the greatest reduction was in the DASH diet compared to the typical American diet.
Tara Schmidt: Some of the main food group targets, you and I both educate on. You mentioned fruits, vegetables, less fat, but also that focus on unsaturated versus saturated or certainly trans fat. I think we’ve got whole grains in there, lean proteins, limited sodium, like you said, and dairy.
More than just the food groups, let’s talk about some of the nutrients. What about potassium? What is that doing for our blood pressure?
Laurie Molina: Potassium in our diet actually can help remove sodium and relax blood vessels, and this can make the effects of reducing your sodium in your diet more favorable or better for your blood pressure. The DASH eating plan puts a big emphasis on dietary potassium, and the goal for that is 4,700 milligrams a day. That’s quite a bit of potassium a day. Most of the US population falls pretty short of this, averaging just above 2,600 milligrams a day. Looking at the food sources that are rich in potassium. A lot of plant-based foods, including potatoes, bananas, tomato products, lentils, and almonds.
Tara Schmidt: Is fiber doing anything?
Laurie Molina: The DASH eating plan is a high fiber diet, given that it is a very plant-forward diet. The DASH diet recommends three or more servings of vegetables a day, four servings of fruits a day, et cetera. When you’re eating higher fiber foods, you are, by default, eating more potassium and usually eating less sodium when you’re eating the fresh or frozen varieties most often.
Tara Schmidt: I was going to say, by default, maybe even having less ultra-processed food because when you’re full on fiber, we don’t have room for snacks.
Laurie Molina: Right.
Tara Schmidt: Okay. That makes complete sense. Another question that I’ve heard from patients is, do I still have to follow a diet that’s low in sodium or follow the DASH eating plan if I’m already on a blood pressure medication?
Can we talk about the benefits of this diet, even if someone’s already on medication for hypertension?
Laurie Molina: Right. I get that too. Having a blood pressure medication is not necessarily a free-for-all in terms of how much sodium you take in a day.
It is beneficial even if you are taking a blood pressure medication to reduce your sodium intake. Some medications for blood pressure don’t work as well when you eat a high-sodium diet.
It’s still important to follow a lower-sodium eating plan even on medications, and it might help prevent the need for more blood pressure medication in the future.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah. And would you agree that it’s individualized, whether or not a DASH diet alone can truly replace your medication? I’ve had this conversation, especially with high cholesterol-people saying, ‘I really don’t want a medication. Can I just do it with diet?’
And I leave it up to their cardiologist most often to say, we’ll give you three months, we’ll give you six months to go hard with the lifestyle thing — the no smoking and the lower stress and the exercise and the healthy diet. But there’s also going to be a cohort of people for whom it’s safest to start a medication, and then maybe we could go down on their dose or wean them off in the future. Do you agree with that kind of scenario?
Laurie Molina: Oh, a hundred percent. I think, ultimately, it is up to your doctor or healthcare provider, based on other risk factors too, whether or not you need to have a medication involved. But I often also see the, “Let’s give it the lifestyle intervention change for a set period of time to see if enough change can be made.”
But a lot of times, medication will be indicated.
Tara Schmidt: Can you talk about some of the sodium goals? I actually am aware that the DASH diet, even in itself, has differing sodium restrictions. What are those numbers? And just a reminder for listeners, that the average daily intake is about 3,400 milligrams a day.
Laurie Molina: They typically are looking at 1,500, mainly versus 2300 milligrams of sodium a day, and I believe that looking back at that study that I referenced earlier, showing that the combination diet of the DASH diet and the low level of sodium, which was 1,500 milligrams, showed the most impact on reducing blood pressure would be a good argument to stick with the 1,500 milligrams a day.
And I do know the American Heart Association recommends that as well. But I also like to look at someone’s lifestyle. I like to look at, realistically, can someone reduce their sodium as much as 1,500 milligrams, or is 2,300 or more a realistic goal, because we have research showing that even at the 2,300 milligram range, you can reduce your blood pressure.
Tara Schmidt: Where are they coming from would be the question. And with patients that you’ve worked with, are you more often weaning them down? Have you had anyone cold turkey and say, ‘I’m doing 1500, let’s go?’
Laurie Molina: Right. I’ve had both. Some people are really quite motivated and able to go cold turkey, not just with sodium, but with a lot of other things. In general, I am more of a fan of the weaning process, making small goals, and reducing sodium in a way that is actually realistic and sustainable for their lifestyle.
Tara Schmidt: Let’s talk about alcohol because DASH has some specific requirements around alcohol intake as well. What’s the relationship even between a glass of wine a day and blood pressure?
Laurie Molina: The DASH eating plan typically recommends the standard, less than one drink a day for women and less than two drinks a day for men in regards to alcohol. The American Heart Association posted an article somewhat recently looking at alcohol intake and blood pressure levels, and I think the big takeaway from that is that excessive alcohol intake can increase your blood pressure.
Tara Schmidt: We don’t endorse drinking everyone, however, it sounds like maybe chronic or high intake of alcohol is going to be the most dangerous here. Does that sound right?
Laurie Molina: Exactly, whether it’s every day or whether it’s binge drinking on the weekends, all of that can add up and over time really affect your blood pressure.
Tara Schmidt: What do you know about caffeine? Because I don’t think the DASH diet really mentions or references caffeine, but I believe it can temporarily increase our blood pressure. Is caffeine playing an important role at all?
Laurie Molina: I don’t think so. Typically when we’re looking at blood pressure being an issue, it’s because it’s chronically elevated. If you’re just enjoying your morning cup of coffee, I don’t think there should be much concern.
Tara Schmidt: Good. I probably need a little bit of a blood pressure raise in the morning to get myself moving. Excellent to hear.
Laurie Molina: I need two blood pressure raises.
Tara Schmidt: My blood pressure’s fine, everyone. Don’t worry. Are there any other diets outside of DASH that have been known to lower blood pressure? We hear a lot about the Mediterranean, et cetera. Anything else out there that has research behind it?
Laurie Molina: The Mediterranean diet has been shown to lower the risk for heart disease, including reducing cholesterol and blood pressure.
The Mediterranean diet has quite a few similarities to the DASH eating plan with its core foods, the fruits and the vegetables, the whole grains, legumes, and nuts and leaner proteins and fish. In that sense, especially the potassium intake, will likely reduce sodium because you’re reducing your intake of ultra processed foods. But the Mediterranean diet is not so specific to tell you the amount of sodium per day.
Tara Schmidt: Reducing your high blood pressure is all about the DASH: Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It has the elements of a standard ‘healthy’ diet like the Mediterranean — more fruits and veggies, less high-fat dairy and saturated fat — with an emphasis on reducing your sodium levels over time.
But what makes DASH work isn’t just less salt. The plan also focuses on potassium and fiber. Potassium helps relax blood vessels and rid the body of excess sodium. And the fiber leaves less room for ultra-processed foods and helps you meet potassium goals.
DASH can slip smoothly into your regular routine. Stick to alcohol in moderation, don’t stress about your morning coffee, and if you’re already on blood pressure meds, keep taking them.
And now that we know what to target for a low-sodium diet, let’s explore the how.
Tara Schmidt: What do you give patients in terms of advice for label reading when they’re grocery shopping? What’s too high?
Laurie Molina: The first thing that I would say is if you tend to shop mostly around the perimeter of the grocery store, you are likely to be choosing foods that are lower in sodium and higher in potassium. However, there are some great products within the frozen section and the middle aisles as well.
Typically, if you’re looking at a nutrition label, try to choose foods with no more than about 200 milligrams of sodium per serving. That is, if you’re eating one serving of that food. Or no more than about 600 milligrams per meal can be a fairly quick way to look at a label.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah, those numbers are exactly what I’ve told people before, because if you think about having, give or take, 600 milligrams three times a day — we’re now at 1,800. Maybe you’ve got a snack in there or two — we’re around that two grams or 2,000-milligram range.
And let’s talk more about processed foods. Because it’s not necessarily processed food or a food that’s in the middle of your grocery store that’s the enemy. It’s more about making sure that it’s low or has no sodium in it. I’m thinking, oats are in the middle of my grocery store.
You can certainly have canned beans with no added salt.
What advice do you give about allowing for packaged food or processed food, but still staying low sodium?
Laurie Molina: Any food at the grocery store has been processed to some degree, so, saying that you’re cutting out or I don’t eat processed foods, it’s not exactly realistic and not a great way to have a healthy relationship with food.
There are many packaged, ultra-processed foods that actually have lower-sodium options, such as your crackers and your chips, et cetera. And they have different claims on them. If you see a reduced sodium claim, you’ll see 25% less sodium than the original product.
If you see light in sodium, 50% less sodium than the original product — low sodium would be 140 milligrams of sodium or less per serving, so that’s how you could interpret some of those in regard to those more ultra-processed foods.
Understanding that a reduced-sodium product might still be fairly high in sodium.
Tara Schmidt: Yes.
Laurie Molina: Looking at the label would be a good idea. Soy sauce is a great example there. But, in regard to other foods you can find in the middle aisles of the grocery store, you can get canned beans that have no salt added, and they only have about 10 milligrams of sodium per half a cup, compared to the salted variety that has at least 130 milligrams of sodium per half a cup.
Tara Schmidt: This is a topic that I was getting a lot of inquiries about.
I think I wrote an article about it earlier in the year, and it’s all about these different types of salt. We’ve got sea salt, Himalayan salt, celtic sea salt. Does switching to any of these fancier, sometimes colorful, definitely more expensive salts, make any difference in our actual sodium intake if we were to cook with them?
Laurie Molina: In regard to the sodium, it does not make a difference.
Tara Schmidt: You can say that twice..
Laurie Molina: If you buy five different products, turn them over — they all have roughly the same amount of sodium per teaspoon.
Tara Schmidt: The only thing I’ve told people is that if you find yourself using less of it, because it’s a bigger grain — is that what we call them — grain of salt, and you’re just going to sprinkle it, and not do the salt shaker thing. Then you might end up with less sodium.
But if we’re talking teaspoon to teaspoon, they’re mostly the same, folks.
What are some of your tips for helping people? Because this is, again, a big concern that we get, make food more flavorful with less salt, with no salt? How do we help people get over the fear that their food is going to be bland?
Laurie Molina: Well, it might taste a little bit bland in the beginning. It does take your taste buds a little while to adapt to using less salt, but it does happen.
I do have a lot of patients who tell me personal experiences — that they have gotten so used to not eating very much salt that if they go out to eat, for example, everything is just way too salty.
Tara Schmidt: Or, think about movie theater popcorn. If you don’t eat movie theater popcorn very often, and then you have it, you’re like, my tongue feels like it’s burning right now.
Laurie Molina: It really does. It makes your tongue raw.
Tara Schmidt: Yes.
Laurie Molina: But great once in a while.
Tara Schmidt: Of course.
Laurie Molina: There are a lot of other seasonings, such as herbs or spices, that you can get fresh or dried. Even some salt-free seasoning blends — Mrs. Dash is a nice one — and you can even make your own seasoning blends. If you like to cook you can.
Have ingredients like dried dill or basil with onion powder, dried oregano, dried lemon pepper, and even lemon juice. You can be doing a lot of things with herbs and spices that don’t involve salt.
Tara Schmidt: Now, speaking of salt-free seasonings, we also have potassium chloride. Table salt is sodium chloride. Who is potassium chloride okay for, or are there people for whom it’s not okay?
Laurie Molina: Generally, potassium chloride, as a salt substitute, is okay for most healthy people. It can leave a bit of a bitter aftertaste, so it’s not — of course — it’s not the same taste as salt, but it is important to still look at the labels because some brands only substitute part of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride and still can contribute a fair amount of sodium.
However, there is a concern with something called hyperkalemia, which is high blood potassium for certain individuals — mainly those who might have chronic kidney disease, diabetes, or heart failure. With certain medications that might reduce your body’s ability to get rid of excess potassium.
Tara Schmidt: I would say most people who’d need to be on a modified potassium diet would know that. Do you agree with that statement?
Laurie Molina: Yes, I do. I would agree with that.
Tara Schmidt: Now, another culprit that we blame, especially here in the US, is restaurants. You mentioned fast food before. We have fairly little control over how our food is prepared, the ingredients in our food, and let’s just say, restaurants know how to make food taste good, and they don’t have to make your food low-sodium. They want you to come back.
How do we have lower sodium intake when we are dining out?
Laurie Molina: There are a lot of ways you can reduce the sodium when eating out at a restaurant. I wouldn’t say that it would be a low-sodium meal, but you can certainly reduce the sodium. The first thing you could do is look out for some of these words on the menu, such as au jus, in cocktail sauce, in tomato base, pickled, smoked, teriyaki, miso glazed, and marinated; all of those are key indicators to you that whatever that entree is will likely be pretty high in salt.
You can also ask your waiter. You can ask them if certain foods, especially proteins, can be prepared without any added salt, breadings, or sauces. Then, maybe you could ask for a little amount of the sauce on the side so you could add just a little bit of flavor. Another thing you can do is look at your sides.
A lot of your sides, like French fries, mashed potatoes, chips, can pack a lot of salt. Instead, ask for fresh fruit, a steamed vegetable, or a baked potato. Those are some good options to reduce your sodium intake.
Tara Schmidt: Perfect. Yeah, it really depends on where your food is starting.
Are they starting with a completely naked piece of protein, and then you can just say, ‘Hey, I don’t want the salt on that?’
It may already be partially cooked, and then they can skip adding the salt later. You might get something even fresher if you’re lucky enough to request it without added salt.
I always tell people, the worst they can say is no, and that’s okay. You’re in control of what you order. You’re also in control of how much you eat, and maybe it’s just a fact of how often you go out to eat, and if you don’t go out to eat very often, maybe you should just eat the fries, and that’s okay.
Laurie Molina: That’s exactly how I feel. Once again, adapting it to lifestyles.
Tara Schmidt: Yes. Any other tips you have for people with hypertension?
Laurie Molina: I would say that small changes over time can make a big difference. Sometimes it’s really intimidating to look at an eating pattern such as the DASH eating pattern and say, wow, I realistically can’t include that many servings of these foods.
And I am traveling for work. And I eat out all the time, so setting micro goals: ‘I’m going to order the fresh fruit with my burger rather than the fries,’ or, ‘I’ll add one serving of vegetables a day,’ can be a good starting point depending on your situation.
You can always adapt recipes, too. I like to swap out the soy sauce because using one tablespoon of soy sauce is about 960 milligrams of sodium, which is a lot. I use Coconut Aminos — the brand that I use has 200 milligrams per tablespoon — so quite a bit less.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah, and something that I ask people is, what are the other items in your meal?
I’ve had so many, usually older patients, worry that they can’t have soup anymore. And soup is so convenient and comforting. And what I usually tell them is, ‘Well, you can probably have soup. We’ll look at the label, or maybe we can talk about making your own, but what else are you having with soup?’
If you’re having soup with crackers and cheese? And pickles and chips, we should probably adapt something like that. But what if you have your soup with a piece of whole grain bread and there can be a little tub spread or butter on that, and then you have an apple and peanut butter? I still gave you your wonderful bowl of soup or cup of soup, but we cut out all the extra stuff that had additional sodium, so you didn’t just get one big bomb all at once.
Laurie Molina: I use that same example with cottage cheese, Tara, because I have a lot of people who really like cottage cheese.
Tara Schmidt: It’s having a moment right now.
Laurie Molina: I know it is that protein, and especially if it’s your breakfast protein, you need. There are not a lot of options at breakfast, though.
If we look at them, we say, oh no, it has sodium in it. I can’t eat that, but I do the same thing.
Well, what else are you eating at that meal? Because if you’re having cottage cheese with fresh fruit in it…
Tara Schmidt: Gross. No, I’m just kidding. I hate cottage cheese in food.
Laurie Molina: You do? Oh no, I love it.
Tara Schmidt: Sorry. I didn’t mean to yuck your yum.
Laurie Molina: No, it’s okay. It’s not for everyone.
Tara Schmidt: Laurie, thank you so much for your time, and sharing your hypertension, high blood pressure, wisdom, and counseling with us.
Laurie Molina: Thank you for having me.
Tara Schmidt: Reducing your salt intake requires a multipronged approach. You can follow the DASH eating plan, pick the low-sodium options at the grocery store, and swap soy sauce with Coconut Aminos.
You can order differently at your favorite restaurant, and rely on herbs and spices when you cook at home. It’s all about the small daily choices that add up over time. For some low-sodium inspiration, check out some recipes from Mayo, linked in the show notes. Your taste buds will adjust, and your arteries will thank you.
That’s all for this episode, but if you have a follow-up question, leave us a voicemail at (507) 538-6272, and we’ll answer it in a future episode!
For more “On Nutrition” episodes and resources, check us out online at mayoclinic.org/onnutrition. And if you found this show helpful, please subscribe. And make sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app — it really helps others find our show.
Thanks for listening! And until next time, eat well, and be well.
Mayo Clinic’s low-sodium recipes: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/recipes/low-sodium-recipes/rcs-20077197
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