Panera is joining a growing list of food companies and restaurant chains that are dropping ingredients consumers are increasingly uneasy about eating. But the St. Louis-based chain’s announcement didn’t mention cutting salt, as far as I could tell from published reports.
Miss you Panera, get the salt out of your menu please!
Baked goods like cakes and even snack cakes (i.e. HoHos) have been largely off my diet since having angioplasty in 2012. And I miss them terribly.
So I’m always looking for something baked that I can eat without too much presumed damage to my arteries. That means looking for low-fat, low-salt baked items, almost an impossibility. But there are some. Normally they’re smaller than anything I once ate, but at least they satisfy my cravings a bit.Look at all those chocolate chips on each top…Here’s what they really look like on a small plate.Find the chips?
One such product is VitaTops. They’re essentially muffin tops with chocolate chips in them so I can taste a bit of chocolate. Each is only 100 calories and has only 3 grams of fat and 170 mgs of sodium. So eating two means 340 mgs of sodium, about a fifth of my daily 1,500 mg limit. Continue reading “VitaTops — a quick snack but don’t believe the picture”→
Ketchup is a must-have condiment for me, but traditional brands are loaded with salt and sugar, so I’m constantly on the lookout for low-salt alternatives. I’ve already done a taste test of two brands, Westbrae and LocalFolks.
Recently I tried another brand, Doc’s Gourmet Ketchup. Doc’s has 65 mgs of sodium and 3 grams of sugar in a tablespoon compared with LocalFolks which has 25 mgs of sodium and 2 grams of sugar, so ingredient-wise it’s already at a disadvantage. I recently did a side-by-side test of the two on turkey meatloaf I made.
Doc’s ketchup, on the right, is brown, not red like LocalFolks, on the left. Doc’s also doesn’t taste like ketchuo.
The Doc’s was severely disappointing, tasting more like a peppery barbecue sauce than a tomato ketchup. It’s brown color belies its barbecue sauce taste as does the liquid smoke listed as an ingredient. I don’t want to throw the remainder of it away, so I’m saving it to use on some chicken that I grill this summer to see if it tastes better as a barbecue sauce than as a ketchup.
All the low-salt, low-sugar ketchups I’ve found are considerably more expensive than regular brands, so if you buy one, the taste should work for you, it’s too expensive to buy something you’ll ultimately not use. Sorry Doc. John
I was recently at Food 4 Less looking for a low-fat, low-salt brown gravy to have with some left-over turkey we had brought home from my in-laws house on Easter. Most prepared gravies are very high in salt, even the fat-free varieties. I have found a salt-free gravy online but didn’t have time to order it in this instance.
So after comparing all the prepared gravies and finding them all too high in salt and fat, I looked at the mixes section. Gravy mixes normally are loaded with salt too but I was surprised to find a reduced salt offering in the Kroeger store brand.
Kroger’s reduced sodium brown gravy had less salt than prepared gravies but the taste was just ok, it still tasted salty to me.Kroger reduced sodium gravy nutrition info
I bought two packets and mixed the contents with water to make my turkey gravy. Each quarter cup, prepared had 210 mgs of sodium, so if you use half a cup, you’re at 410 mgs, about a fifth of my daily salt limit.That’s a significant amount for a condiment. The taste was ok, nothing to write home about.
Would I buy this again? I suppose, but not with a lot of enthusiasm. John
Pure and Simple apparently is a new brand of lunchmeat from processor Land O’ Frost. I saw a coupon for it in my local paper recently and was intrigued. All lunch meats have too much salt for me, and for most people really. Some brands have tried to take out some salt, but as far as I’m concerned, their salt content is still too high.
I was hoping this new Pure and Simple line might be different. The coupon ad highlights that this line contains no antibiotics, no animal byproducts and no nitrates/nitrites. Bravo for all of that, especially the last since those have been linked to cancer.
I was hoping this new line of lunchmeats had less or no sodium. It has a lot, avoid it.
But when I searched out salt content for the new line, I was disappointed. Two ounces of Land O Frost Pure and Simple – Honey Roasted Turkey Breast has 380 mgs of sodium, according to myfitnesspal.com. that compares to 360 mgs in 51 grams, about 1.7 ounces, of the same company’s Simply Delicious line of lunchmeats, so it’s really no improvement. It is less than its Premium line which has 510 mgs of sodium in 50 grams of its turkey.
Two ounces of turkey is not a meal for anyone really. I’d need at least six or eight in a sandwich, which would be a day’s worth of sodium for me. So I’ll continue to avoid cold cuts to maintian my low sodium diet. John
Whole wheat pasta is supposedly better for me on my restricted diet than regular pasta.
Something to do with complex carbs and simple carbs. I don’t know if I buy it all, but to be safe, I have been eating almost exclusively whole wheat pasta in recent years.
I wrote earlier this week about a weekend my wife and I had in Milwaukee recently. One of our stops was a wonderful, long-time institution in Milwaukee’s Italian-American community, Glorioso’s Italian Market. The market has moved to larger quarters than it was in during my long-ago college days there, but it’s still a very special place to find wonderful Italian specialties, like a world of different pastas. You can buy freshly made pasta there as well as a variety of packaged options.
Glorioso’s home-made linguini is extremely high in sodium.470 mgs per 3 ounces
We bought a whole wheat pasta that was made there and a packaged brand I hadn’t seen before, Garafolo, which comes from Naples, the area my ancestors also came from. Comparing the salt content in the two provided a good illustration of the importance of always reading nutrition labels. Continue reading “Check the salt content when buying whole wheat pasta”→
I blogged earlier this week about tips for cutting salt when you’re eating in a restaurant. One tip is to check nutritional information online before going to a place to find where the salt is hidden. That’s advice I should have followed on a recent lunch trip to an Applebee’s in downtown Milwaukee.
My Applebee’s chicken, with sauce and cheese on the side, was too high in sodium for me.
Applebee’s has been advertising its new Have It All Menu as lower calorie and healthier than its traditional fare. Applebee’s doesn’t have a place near where I live thee days, so when we were in Milwaukee recently, I thought it would be a good chance to try the new menu at an Applebee’s we were walking past in downtown Milwaukee.
The new menu seemed appealing and had several dishes I considered ordering. The ad line Applebee’s is using for them is “all the flavor, all under 600 calories. It should add …”and all the salt.”
Now it’s time to make my taco dinner. I begin by browning a pound of extra-lean (96% lean) ground beef in the Mrs. Dash seasoning and water. I also cut up lettuce, low-salt olives, and tomatoes to add in.
Once the beef is done, it’s simply a matter of building your tacos. Use low-salt, low-fat tortillas from Whole Foods as the bae, add beef, lettuce, olives, tomatoes and top off with a low-sodium salsa such as Desert Peppers brand.
Use extra-lean ground beef and low-salt salsa, low-salt olives and low-salt tortillas.
Here’s a quick ingredient review with nutritional information for each:
Mrs. Dash Salt-free Taco SeasoningMrs. Dash Salt-free Taco Seasoning Nutrition information 96% lean ground beef96% lean ground beef nutritional information Desert Pepper low-sodium salsaDesert Pepper salsa nutrition information 365 organic tortillas365 organic tortillas nutrition information
Low sodium olives will save you 25 mgs per serving. It can add up
Taco shells, especially the crispy kind, can be loaded with fat and salt. Old El Paso shells, as an example, have 7 grams of fat per three shells and 135 mgs of sodium. Double that for a typical full-sized serving and you see the fat and salt add up.
365 organic tortillas 365 organic tortillas nutrition information
After finding Mrs. Dash made a salt-free taco seasoning, I’ve been on a quest to create a low-salt, low-fat taco. I’ve found low-salt salsa and hit upon using 96% lean ground beef to cut the fat. But I needed something low-salt and low-fat to wrap them in. I could have used Romaine lettuce leaves but I wanted something a bit more substantial, so I searched the aisles at several food stores before finding organic corn Tortillas at Whole Foods.
This handy offering (in the refrigerated case) has only 15 mgs of sodium in three tortillas and only 2 grams of fat. So six of these have only 30 mgs of sodium and 4 grams of fat.
If you’re avoiding corn in your diet, these are not for you. Total carb count is 28 grams of carbs in three shells here, or 56 grams if you eat six as I did. If corn isn’t an issue though, give them a try. John
Potato skins are a Super Bowl standard but all that fat in the cheese and bacon are out if you’re on a low-salt, low-fat diet. But a reader of this blog recently suggested making mashed potatoes using low-salt chicken stock rather than butter and milk. So we’re adding these as an option for our week of Super Bowl treats.
I tried the idea and loved it, so I thought why not take it to the next level but using the mixture to make a twice-baked potato? Simply bake several large potatoes until they are soft to the touch. They can be done in a microwave as well, check yours for cooking times since that varies by microwave.
All you need for fat-free, low-salt mashed potatoes.Add soup slowly and mash to get the consistency you want. This first attempt of mine got a little too mushy.Once the consistency you want, spoon into your potato skins and broil a few minutes to brown the tops.
