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Candy (continued)
Malted Milk Balls 28 113 4
Mr. Goodbar 16 162 10
Nestle Crunch bar 50 110 2
Low-Sodium Salad Dressings and Condiments
Dressings
Russian 2 33 16
Thousand Island 2 33 16
Vinegar 2 5 2
Condiments
Horseradish 17 52 3.0
Homemade 7 13 2.0
sour cream sauce
Tabasco sauce 22 3 0.1
(1 teaspoon)
Tabasco (6 drops) 15 1 0.1
Perc for natural 1.5 22 14.6
spices
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7
Keep a Food Diary
Following a low-sodium, high K-factor diet plan will put you more
in touch with your body and its relationship to food than ever be-
fore. I m sure you want to begin as quickly as possible. Starting a
food diary is the best way to jump right in.
Purchase a small spiral notebook, preferably small enough to fit
into a pocket, purse, or briefcase. Record what you eat and drink,
how much, when, and why. In addition, at the beginning or end of
each day, note your blood pressure and pulse rate. Each evening,
evaluate your food in one or two sentences: Was it low sodium, high
potassium? Was it balanced? Did you eat enough? Did you eat too
much?
Just as each journey no matter how long starts with the first
step, each life accounts for an enormous amount of food taken one
bite at a time. You are now going to make each bite work for you!
HOW THE DIARY WORKS
You will probably discover that low-sodium, high-potassium eating
is easy. The advantage of keeping a food diary was vividly illustrated
when a colleague at Georgetown Medical School conducted an
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64 25 Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure
experiment with some students who wanted to lose weight. The
professor introduced me and told the students I was researching
food habits and would like each of them to keep a food diary. Each
was given a standard spiral notebook in which they listed everything
they ate or drank, how much, when, and why. Then each night be-
fore retiring, each student spent ten minutes reviewing the foods
he d eaten and wrote a short twenty-five-word summary critiquing
his selections.
Every member of that group lost weight. Two years later, the pro-
fessor who kept in touch with them told me all of them had kept it
off. They selected food better than most dietitians would select.
They told me that the act of thinking through what they ate forced
them to take control, and each recognized what she could do to con-
trol her eating habits and still enjoy food. New food habits came to
these students almost instinctively.
There is no special way to keep a food diary. Just write what you
ate and when, why you chose that food, and whether it was within
your low-sodium, high-potassium target. When you take your
blood pressure, include the results in your diary that s the ultimate
scorecard.
I have seen people adopt many types of diaries for these or simi-
lar objectives. Some people have used commercial daytime planners,
others have used elaborate computer recorders. Whatever works is
fine. But remember that three things are absolutely essential: hon-
esty, keeping track of everything you eat, and paying attention to the
results. Your end-of-the-day critique is the most important step of
all. If done correctly, it will give you a better understanding of your-
self and your relationship to food. I ve noticed that more medical
experts have people keep a food diary. This concept can work for
you as you seek to improve this aspect of your life.
8
Balance Fat
What do a stick of butter and a bottle of olive oil have in common?
They re both fat and provide 9 calories per gram or 252 calories per
ounce or about 85 calories per tablespoon. But olive oil is much
better for you than butter.
Most animal fat, for example, butter or the white fat around beef,
is solid at room temperature. In contrast, vegetable fat more spe-
cifically vegetable oil is liquid at room temperature. It s obvious why
nutritionists call animal fat hard fat and vegetable oil soft fat.
SATURATED VERSUS UNSATURATED FATS
Saturated and unsaturated fats differ in their chemical structure.
The terms saturated and unsaturated refer specifically to their chem-
ical structure or molecular configuration. Chemists tell us the struc-
ture of highly saturated or hard fat is dense and uniform because the
molecular linkages holding the carbon atoms together are all used
up. In contrast, vegetable oils are not dense and uniform. The link-
ages holding their carbon atoms together are not used up. The
spaces in their molecular structure are open and reactive. When you
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66 25 Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure
see hydrogenated vegetable oil on a label, it means hydrogen was
added to those open spaces, which turns the oil into a solid fat.
Olive oil, a monounsaturated fatty acid (MFA), is an excellent ex-
ample of an oil that has only one open space. MFA oils are liquid at
room temperature, tend to be amber in color, and are somewhat
thick or moderately viscous.
Beef lard is a saturated fatty acid (SFA). SFAs are not liquid at
room temperature; they are white and hard. This is true of most an-
imal fat.
Sunflower oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), an oil that
has many open spaces. PUFA oils vary in their degree of saturation.
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