Get the Salt Out (65 page)

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“Heart-healthy” symbols on a menu
can
signal entrees that are lower in salt and sodium than other entrees, but not always. At one spa-type restaurant I visited, I was surprised to see a chicken teriyaki dinner labeled heart-smart: it may have been lower in fat and cholesterol than traditional fare, but it certainly wasn’t low in sodium. (Just two tablespoons of teriyaki sauce contain about 1,300 milligrams of sodium!) The truth is that heart-healthy labeling on restaurant menus often is not regulated. Many restaurants put heart-smart symbols on their menus without American Heart Association approval or without even claiming that those meals are low in salt. If you visit a restaurant where heart-healthy symbols are used on the menu, don’t consider
the symbols rubber stamps that the entrees are good choices to order: judge for yourself whether each entree sounds as if it is low in sodium, and also be sure that the entree is not prepared with unhealthy margarine or excessive sweeteners.

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Get the salt out of breakfast
by avoiding surprisingly high-sodium croissants, pastries, and other baked goods, and all breakfast meats such as sausage, bacon, and ham. (These are sources of potentially carcinogenic sodium nitrites and nitrates.) Your best bets for breakfast are unsalted poached, scrambled, soft-boiled, or hard-boiled eggs; plain or vegetable omelettes without added salt; basic cereals such as oatmeal or shredded wheat; or fresh, fruit.
One Salt Shaker.

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Order salad as a first course instead of soup.
Just like commercial canned soups sold in supermarkets, the soups that are served in restaurants are overly salty because they’re designed to satisfy taste buds used to too much salt. Until the public learns to prefer less salt in all its food, the best choice for a meal starter in restaurants will always be a salad.
One Salt Shaker.

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The safest salad dressing to order
as far as salt and sodium is concerned is vinegar and oil or lemon wedges and oil.
One Salt Shaker.

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If you must order a different salad dressing,
order it on the side and dip your fork into the dressing before taking bites of salad.
Two Salt Shakers.

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Or put a teaspoon of the dressing on your salad and thin it out
with lemon juice or vinegar. Either of these options, however, isn’t as healthy for you as oil and plain vinegar or lemon juice because most commercial salad dressings contain not only unhealthy salt but also undesirable MSG and hydrogenated oils.
Two Salt Shakers.

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Better yet, bring a low-sodium dressing to the restaurant with you.
Two-ounce watertight Tupperware containers
known as Midgets are extremely helpful for this purpose, enabling you to unobtrusively carry homemade dressings or unrefined oils with you just about anywhere you go.
One Salt Shaker.

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Avoid ordering entrees that contain any of the following red-flag words or phrases:
soy sauce, tamari sauce, or shoyu sauce—three ingredients that should always alert you to a meal with a high-sodium content. Other ingredients to beware of are:

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Teriyaki sauce
(which is a blend of soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar).