How to Follow a Blood Pressure Controlling Diet

Doug Steingraber: I am Doug Steingraber and this is my wife, Sarah. I take one day a week and I go by and visit heart patients at local hospital. It is part of our amended heart's program and we are all heart survivors and we want to tell our story to the patients. Each morning you got to get up, you want to exercise. Sarah Steingraber: Both Doug and I have high blood pressure and we take medicine, high blood pressure medicine for that and we try to watch what we eat. Doug Steingraber: Sticking to a low-sodium diet is a real challenge, eating out in any restaurant is a challenge and just eating at home when you are making quick meals, it's a challenge. I guess it's ironic. Here I am talking to people about being healthy, about their heart and their diet and I still need to help myself, we need a lot of help. Carolyn O'Neil: Hello! Sarah Steingraber: Hi! Carolyn O'Neil: Hi! I am Carolyn O'Neil, I know that you are Doug and Sarah, I am registered dietitian and I heard that you are in a need of a food rescue. Dough Steingraber: We sure are, absolutely. Carolyn O'Neil: Well, most important to me was meeting Doug and Sarah, 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 additional improvements and also do things more conveniently. Sarah, I want to say that I have already noticed two things; a fruit bowl, very excited to see this, and a spice rack and that is because I think when you are cooking for heart-healthy cooking specifically to lower your blood pressure. It's important to add fresh fruits and vegetables; they are great source of potassium and potassium is the mineral that's kind of the good guy that works in opposition of sodium to help low your blood pressure. Dough Steingraber: I was never told that. Carolyn O'Neil: And your spice rack, Sarah, I am very excited because again, we got to work always to add flavor to food, we don't want 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 on a low-sodium diet. It's also really good to compare like products, not apples to orange juice but let's say, in this case, diced tomatoes to diced tomatoes. One is no salt added and one is just the regular diced tomatoes and Sarah, look at how dramatic the difference is. Can you read that to us? Sarah Steingraber: 220 milligrams for half cup versus 20 milligrams. Carolyn O'Neil: Wow! So that's a big difference. Have either of you heard about the DASH Diet. Doug and Sarah Steingraber: No Carolyn O'Neil: Okay, 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, pop-corn counts, guess what, as a whole grain, non-fat dairy and lean 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 paramount when you were looking at new recipes. So do you like to cook? Sarah Steingraber: I do. I like to cook when I have time. Carolyn O'Neil: I mean just look in your refrigerator, you look like you got makings of a lot of great food, just keeping that pantry stocked and knowing about some of those products to have on hand like the rice, the frozen rice 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, we have got carrots and yellow squash and green zucchini and then rosemary for flavor and of course, little garlic too. Sarah Steingraber: It looks so cheerful. Carolyn O'Neil: Doesn't it, all the colors? Adding flavor without adding sodium is actually pretty easy. You've just got to look beyond the salt to other acidy things like lemon or vinegars, adding wine in cooking, adding herbs, fresh herbs often a really, really distinct in flavor. Sarah Steingraber: Looks wonderful! This looks so good. Carolyn O'Neil: And kind of faster, what would you say? Sarah Steingraber: Oh yes, very fast. Carolyn O'Neil: When you think about it, I mean yeah, you get to chop the vegetables. The rice was certainly easy in the microwave, the carrots are already chopped up for us and you know it's like one zucchini and a couple of yellow squash and we are done. Sarah Steingraber: It's delicious, Doug. Doug Steingraber: Yeah, it's very tasty. Yes, I agree. Sarah Steingraber: Carolyn tossed that with a little bit of rice and if you chopped vegetables, we can make anything with a little bit of herbs and spices. Doug Steingraber: And it's simple what she did, that's what made it very, I think, enjoyable too. It didn't take long, it was easy to prepare. Sarah Steingraber: I know we are going to be in good shape going forward.