Get the Salt Out (19 page)

BONUS TIP:
In addition to drinking low-sodium water, its also tremendously important to drink water that is free of chlorine, chemicals, lead, rust, and pathogenic bacteria and parasites. A high-quality water filter takes out impurities like these and gives you clean water that will support optimal health. To receive more information about the Doulton of England water filters that I recommend to my clients, call Uni Key Health Systems, which is listed in the Resources section.

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Always opt for seltzer instead of club soda.
Both are made from tap water that is filtered and carbonated, but club soda is higher in sodium because it has mineral salts added to it. Common ingredients added to club soda include sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sodium chloride (salt), and sometimes disodium phosphate. Remember that the lower-sodium choice always is seltzer.

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Refrain from adding salt to cooking water when you prepare pasta, cereals, and grains.
Even though package directions usually call for it, adding salt simply is not necessary and can contribute hundreds of unwanted sodium milligrams per dish. Many people think the addition of salt lowers the boiling point of water, but in fact it has no effect on the waters boiling temperature in the amounts normally added.
One Salt Shaker.

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When cooking grains and spaghetti, try adding a bay leaf to cooking water in place of salt.
It is such a nice substitute
that nutritionist Judith Benn Hurley calls bay leaf “the sodium slasher.”
One Salt Shaker.

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Or add a few drops of fresh lemon juice or a pinch of herbs to the cooking water.
This is a creative way to eliminate the salt and give pasta and grains a more refreshing flavor.
One Salt Shaker.

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If you think cooking food in salted water couldn’t possibly affect your health,
consider this: in the 1970s, two tribes in the Solomon Islands were found to have very similar lifestyles and diets, but one of the tribes, the Lau, cooked their vegetables in seawater, and the other tribe, the Aita, did not. The Aita consumed about 500 milligrams of sodium each day and did not have one case of hypertension among them. The Lau, on the other hand, consumed 3,000 to 4,500 extra sodium milligrams each day from its practice of cooking with salty seawater, and 10 percent of the population suffered from high blood pressure.

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Switch to bathing in magnetically conditioned water instead of salt-softened water.
Many people prefer to bathe with salt-softened water because it doesn’t leave mineral deposits and because soaps work better in it. Unfortunately though, the cleansing benefits of softened water come with an undesirable trade-off: softened water increases the risk of heart disease and may also contribute to goiters and gallbladder disease. Even worse, fatal heart attacks and strokes are much more common in areas where softened water is used. Instead of using a water softener, which replaces valuable calcium and magnesium
with sodium, use a magnetic water conditioner, which changes the orientation of water’s mineral ions. Hard water treated in this way will “behave” as if it was softened (in other words, as if the mineral content was lowered). This gives you the best of both worlds: all of the beneficial minerals present in hard water along with many of the cleansing benefits salt-softened water provides. To purchase or learn more about magnetic water conditioners, see the GMX listing in the Resources section.