Sodium when gets in touch with chlorine becomes salt, the much needed grains needed to enhance the taste of our food. But over indulgence of it could be harmful.
Sodium is believed to have entered the earth by exploding stars that entered the earth’s atmosphere and becomes salt when it gets in touch with chlorine found in the ocean.
Sodium has been very important since a long time, and researchers have found that in the form of salt, sodium could in fact be used as a preservative and seasoning for meats that were introduced into the human diet. Therefore, the human body began to get used to the introduction of sodium in higher volumes, and thus trend has been growing since a long time. But modern understanding of sodium tells us that overusing it could negatively affect the systems of the body and endanger the overall health.
We have brought to you a guide to eat less sodium in restaurants.
The Sodium Situation
Unprocessed foods such as milk have small amounts of sodium in them, and therefore it is pretty difficult to figure out the exact amount of sodium that you are consuming. Then you can very well imagine what happens when you eat out. This is because you do not know how the food you are eating has been prepared. The places where you get very high amount of sodium are the fast-casual restaurants, as they happen to assemble the food instead of preparing them right from scratch.
Also Asian restaurants like Japanese, Thai and Chinese happen to serve high sodium food, the reason being that they use a lot of sauces, chicken stock, and soups. Italian restaurants using canned tomato products and cheese also go high on sodium. The best way to deal with such situations when you are really craving for some of these foods is to order foods that are plain and reducing on the portion of food.
Tips to Cut down on Sodium
• You could ask questions to know about the way the food you are eating has been prepared, and this includes even the simplest of the foods. You could ask about the ingredients such as spices, herbs, marinades and sauces that finish the preparation, all of these can be loaded with sodium.
• You will find local restaurants where they cook in accordance to your orders, and these are where you can ask them to put less salt. You could also request them to slow easy on all those ingredients that contain sodium.
• You can skip the sauce, or better still ask them to serve it on the side. You could just take a miserly dip into the sauce for taste, but be sure that it is miserly as miserly can get!
• Try to eat foods that are grilled, baked or roasted.
• Like we have been discussing all this while, try to avoid salsa and ketchup as they are loaded with sodium.
• Don’t just go ahead and add salt to the food that is served to you. You should taste and see if you need some extra salt.
• Include fruits and vegetables in your meals; go for steamed vegetables with no sauce and you can squeeze a lemon for some flavour.
• Try and avoid foods that contain cheese, avoid olives, deli meat and croutons in the salad.
• Try having fruit for dessert.
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