Congrats on your diet Chic! It sounds as though you don't eat much highly processed or ultraprocessed food, which often contain excessive salt. If you're paying attention to the amount of salt you take in from healthy sources like salted nuts, some fish, and many canned vegetables, then you're likely to be fine adding moderate amounts of salt in your cooking or to occasionally season food on your plate.
However, salt can have a big impact on blood pressure, and some people are especially sensitive. As we age, our blood pressure tends to increase and regular monitoring is important for all of us.
To your question, Chic, our bodies need some salt, but I'm careful about pushing it. If you're mindful about your intake and know where your blood pressure tends to be, you'll likely achieve a good balance.
Two tips I like to share:
• I like to mix together salted nuts with unsalted nuts for a small snack. The flavor is enhanced without as much added salt.
• I use a home blood pressure monitor so I can control the conditions and get readings I can count on and compare. Just the stress of rushing to and being in the doctor’s office tends to make my pressure readings bounce around from visit to visit.
I’m curious – how do others think about the salt in their diet?
Let’s talk potato chips. The ones I eat have just three ingredients - potatoes, vegetable oil and salt. Sounds pretty good to me. Or is this a “bad” highly processed food? Can’t tell from the ingredients.
Oh Chic! Now I am salivating. I think of potato chips as a very occasional but very rewarding (!) pleasure. Hyper-palatable like ultraprocessed food but with just three common ingredients. Not all foods with just three common ingredients are high on the healthy scale, however.
The little bag of rainy-day-chips in my cupboard has about the same salt content as the salted peanuts I use, so not terrible.
The vegetable oils are seed oils (as are yours, likely), so fine on the saturated fat content.
However, the potato is fried, so it has about the same glycemic index as white bread: very high at 95. These chips become caloric energy very quickly, which is not what I like for my metabolism.
Basically, for a couple of hundred calories in my single-serving bag, I get nothing I am going to need in my diet today except calories, and I rather those come in a lower-glycemic form (think fiber) with some nutrients.
Now if I can only manage to get these chips back in the cupboard where they belong….
Boiled and baked potatoes have a lower glycemic index than fried potatoes. The frying gelatinizes the starch, making it very available for absorption into the blood stream. I wrongly assumed that potato chips, because they are normally fried, would have a high glycemic index similar to french fries. The index of chips is actually in the 50s, likely due to all the oil absorbed in frying. The oil slows down the absorption of the potato starch. I still regard potato chips, along with french fries, as a treat for special occasions.
Can you talk about salt in a healthy diet for people without cardiovascular disease? For someone who eats a Mediterranean diet mostly cooked at home, who does not have high blood pressure, are there any benefits to reducing or restricting salt intake?
Congrats on your diet Chic! It sounds as though you don't eat much highly processed or ultraprocessed food, which often contain excessive salt. If you're paying attention to the amount of salt you take in from healthy sources like salted nuts, some fish, and many canned vegetables, then you're likely to be fine adding moderate amounts of salt in your cooking or to occasionally season food on your plate.
However, salt can have a big impact on blood pressure, and some people are especially sensitive. As we age, our blood pressure tends to increase and regular monitoring is important for all of us.
To your question, Chic, our bodies need some salt, but I'm careful about pushing it. If you're mindful about your intake and know where your blood pressure tends to be, you'll likely achieve a good balance.
Two tips I like to share:
• I like to mix together salted nuts with unsalted nuts for a small snack. The flavor is enhanced without as much added salt.
• I use a home blood pressure monitor so I can control the conditions and get readings I can count on and compare. Just the stress of rushing to and being in the doctor’s office tends to make my pressure readings bounce around from visit to visit.
I’m curious – how do others think about the salt in their diet?
Let’s talk potato chips. The ones I eat have just three ingredients - potatoes, vegetable oil and salt. Sounds pretty good to me. Or is this a “bad” highly processed food? Can’t tell from the ingredients.
Oh Chic! Now I am salivating. I think of potato chips as a very occasional but very rewarding (!) pleasure. Hyper-palatable like ultraprocessed food but with just three common ingredients. Not all foods with just three common ingredients are high on the healthy scale, however.
The little bag of rainy-day-chips in my cupboard has about the same salt content as the salted peanuts I use, so not terrible.
The vegetable oils are seed oils (as are yours, likely), so fine on the saturated fat content.
However, the potato is fried, so it has about the same glycemic index as white bread: very high at 95. These chips become caloric energy very quickly, which is not what I like for my metabolism.
Basically, for a couple of hundred calories in my single-serving bag, I get nothing I am going to need in my diet today except calories, and I rather those come in a lower-glycemic form (think fiber) with some nutrients.
Now if I can only manage to get these chips back in the cupboard where they belong….
Is the high glycemic index due to it being a potato, or due to the frying?
What if I were to make these potato chips at home, cooked in fresh vegetable oil. Same answer? Would that have same effect on glycemic index?
Boiled and baked potatoes have a lower glycemic index than fried potatoes. The frying gelatinizes the starch, making it very available for absorption into the blood stream. I wrongly assumed that potato chips, because they are normally fried, would have a high glycemic index similar to french fries. The index of chips is actually in the 50s, likely due to all the oil absorbed in frying. The oil slows down the absorption of the potato starch. I still regard potato chips, along with french fries, as a treat for special occasions.
Can you talk about salt in a healthy diet for people without cardiovascular disease? For someone who eats a Mediterranean diet mostly cooked at home, who does not have high blood pressure, are there any benefits to reducing or restricting salt intake?