Get the Salt Out (42 page)

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Eat vegetables liberally each and every day. Vegetables are high in potassium, antioxidants, and fiber and low in sodium, sugars, fat, and calories. They also contain phyto-chemicals—miraculous gifts from nature that help protect our bodies against many diseases, including cancer and heart disease. No matter what research you review, it all says the same
thing: vegetables are just plain good for us. To ensure your best health, try to eat five vegetable servings daily.
One Salt Shaker.

BONUS TIP:
If you tried good-for-you greens like kale, mustard greens, or romaine lettuce hut don’t like their bitter taste, feel free to add a few dashes of unrefined salt to them. Salt appears to counteract bitter flavors, and just a small amount may make bitter foods like greens more palatable for normally staunch vegetable avoiders. Its much better to add salt to nutritious greens than to eat the salt hidden in processed foods. The high-potassium content of these valuable vegetables helps to counteract the sodium content in the salt. If a small amount of added salt helps you enjoy greens better, hopefully you’ll eat more of them.

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Vary the vegetables you eat and use them in innovative ways to keep your diet interesting. (This is always important but especially when you’re trying to cut down on salt.) In the following recipe from
The Yeast Connection Cookbook,
Marjorie Hurt Jones cleverly uses red pepper to form the flavorful base of a sauce for cauliflower. She developed the recipe for anyone who wants to avoid cauliflower in traditionally salty cheese sauce.
One Salt Shaker.

Steam the cauliflower until done, about 10 minutes. While it’s steaming, sauté the chopped red peppers in the olive oil. Use medium-low heat so the peppers soften instead of brown. Just before serving, use a blender or food processor to puree the pepper mixture into a beautiful red sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste and pour over the cauliflower.
Serves 4.

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Choose fresh or frozen vegetables
over canned vegetables whenever possible. Although you can wash away much of the unnecessary sodium in canned vegetables, you can’t restore the potassium that is eliminated during canning. (Canned vegetables lose at least one-third the potassium found in fresh vegetables.)
One Salt Shaker.

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Avoid frozen vegetables that have seasonings or sauces added to them.
The main ingredient in most commercial seasonings and sauces is salt.

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Seek out frozen lima beans and peas that are labeled “no salt added,”
or use fresh or no-salt-added canned lima beans or peas. Before they are frozen, lima beans and peas are sorted by size in a bath of salted water, causing the vegetables to absorb additional salt. For this reason, regular, plain, frozen lima beans and peas always have more sodium than other plain frozen vegetables.
One Salt Shaker.

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Steam vegetables instead of boiling them.
Steaming retains more of vegetables’ crunchy textures and fresh flavors (in addition to more of the minerals found in raw vegetables). Boiling, on the other hand, causes vegetables to wilt and to develop “washed out” tastes that usually need much more salt for flavor.
One Salt Shaker.

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Give piping hot vegetables an herbal touch:
lightly toss them with a few teaspoons of Herb Butter, herbed oil (see tips 42, 44), herbed vinegar, or any low-sodium herbal vinaigrette. Try cooked cabbage with Caraway Butter (see tip 137), baked tomato slices with garlic-marjoram herbed oil, or steamed brussels sprouts with dill vinaigrette.
One Salt Shaker.