Blood Pressure Controlling Diet

Doug Steingrabers: I'm Doug Steingrabers this is my wife Sarah, I take one day week and I go by and visit heart patients in at local hospital, this is power on men in hearts programs, we are all heart survivors and we want to tell our story to the patients. Each morning you early get up, you want to exercise. Sarah: Post diagnosed health, high blood pressure and we take a medicine high blood pressure medicine for they are with, and we try to watch what we eat. Doug Steingrabers: Sticking to a low sodium diet is a real challenge, eating out in the restaurant it's a challenge, and just eating at home when you are making quick meals it's a challenge. I guess its ironic here I am talking to people about being healthy, about their heart and their diet, and I still need help my self. We need a lot of help. Carolyn Oneil: Hello Sarah: Hi Carolyn Oneil: I'm Carolyn O'Neil, I know that you are Doug and Sarah, I'm a registered dietician, and I heard that you are in need of a food rescue. Doug Steingrabers: We sure absolutely. Carolyn Oneil: Well most important meals meeting Doug and Sarah's seeing how motivated they were seeing what they are already doing right and then may be helping to fill in some gaps where they can make a additional improvements and also do things more conveniently. For Sarah I want to say that only notice two things, a fruit bowl very exited to see this and a spice rack, and that is because I think when you are cooking for hot healthy cooking is specifically to lower your blood pressure, its important to add fresh fruits and vegetables are great source of potassium, and potassium is the mineral this kind of good guy that works in opposition of sodium to help lower your blood pressure. Doug Steingrabers: Doctors never told that. Carolyn Oneil: And your spice rack Sarah very excited, because again we got to work on waste to add flavor to food we don't what boring food if it's going to be lower in salt. Just limiting the amount of salt that you put on your food is really not enough, if you are in a low sodium diet. Its also really good to compare a like product, so you are not apples to orange juice but lets say this case diced tomatoes to diced tomatoes one is no salt added and one is just a regular diced tomatoes and Sarah, look at how dramatic the difference is can you read that to us, 220 milligrams half cup verses 20 milligrams, wow so that's a big difference, hope I think you've heard about the dash diet. Dough Sarah: No Carolyn Oneil: Dash stands for Dietary approaches to stop hypertension. So who wouldn't want that, more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains like whole grains cereals the brown rice, popcorn counts guess what, as a whole grain not fat dairy and being protein. The bottom line with the dash diet, it should be enjoyable, so you are happy with your foods, and that means the flavor really is pair of amount when you are looking at new recipes, so do you like to cook? Sarah: I do, I like to cook when I have time. Carolyn Oneil: I mean I just look into your refrigerator it look like you got a well makings of a lot of great foods are you know you just keeping that pantry start in you know and knowing by some of those products to have on hand like that the rice the frozen rice, that we , that we are going to be doing something, even more jazzy with, the rice dish I call confetti rice and it is because of the colors that are in there, see you have got carrots and yellow squash and green tahini and rosemary for flavor and of course little garlic 2 pellets are cheerful, doesn't it all the colors ? Sarah: Yes. Carolyn Oneil: Adding flavor without adding sodium is actually pretty easy, you just got to look beyond a salt to other acidity things like lemon or vinegar's, adding wine in cooking adding a herbs fresh herbs often are really, really distinct in flavor. Sarah: It looks wonderful, this looks so good. Carolyn Oneil: In kind of fast food when you say Sarah: Oh yes, very fast. Carolyn Oneil: When you thing about in I mean you know yeah you got to chop the vegetables the rice was certain easy in the microwave the carrots already chopped for us, and you know its like once tahini and couple of yellow squash, and we are done. Sarah: It's delicious Doug. Doug Steingrabers: Oh it's really tasty, yeah yes I agree. Sarah: Carolyn taught us that with a little bit of rice and a few chopped vegetables we can make anything, with a little bit of herbs and spices in this. Doug: And is simple what she did, that's what made a very I think it is enjoyable too it didn't take longer it was easy to prepare, Sarah: I know we are going to be in to check one for it.