It is well known that too much salt can cause high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Here are our tips to reduce your daily salt intake and follow the healthy DASH diet:

What do you know about the DASH Diet?

The DASH Diet, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is the most common healthy diet to be used in controlling blood pressure and heart disease. Just follow it for two weeks and you will start to notice blood pressure control and lower levels! The DASH diet is more of an approach and lifestyle than a diet and diet and aims to reduce the amount of sodium in the diet and focus on foods that are beneficial to promote heart and artery health and lower blood pressure, such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Saturated, such as skimmed milk, and rich in unsaturated fat sources such as olive oil and nuts. By following the DASH diet, you may also help yourself by getting rid of excess fat and losing weight, in addition to other benefits in the long run, such as the prevention of some chronic diseases, such as osteoporosis, cancers, heart disease, and diabetes.

The DASH diet focuses on reducing the amount of sodium (salt) intake so that no more than 1500 mg – 2300 mg of sodium is consumed during the day.

It is known that too much salt can cause high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.

To help you further, we will show you how to reduce the amount of salt in your diet!

Be aware that adding salt to food is not the only way to get salt and eat a lot of it. About 75% of the salt we eat daily is found mainly in daily foods such as bread, breakfast cereals, and ready meals. Here are the following tips that may help you a lot in reducing the amount of salt and sodium intake daily:

1- Do not add salt to your food:

Whether you are going to eat your food at home or outside, do not add direct salt to your food, and start reducing your addiction to salt gradually, so that you will reach a stage where you will get used to the taste of eating without salt and you will find it good.

2- Read the food label and choose foods with lower sodium or salt content.

When shopping, compare the types of food through the food label and choose the lowest content in sodium or salt, and thus you will choose the types of breakfast cereals, dairy, and sauces that are less salty than others.

3- Eliminate canned and ready-made food and replace it with fresh:

Try to stay away from processed, canned and preserved foods, such as ready-made and smoked meat and fish, which may be high in sodium. Make sure to buy fresh fruits and vegetables instead of canned and high-sodium legumes.

4- Be wise in choosing your snacks:

Eat healthy snacks such as vegetable and fruit slices instead of chips, chips, and prepackaged snacks that are high in sodium.

5- Cook food with less salt:

You can dispense with adding salt when you cook food, and replace it with other flavorings for food such as spices, herbs, lemon and various spices, for example: add black pepper seasoning to eggs, pasta, pizza, soups and fish instead of salt, and add fresh herbs and spices to each of vegetables, meat, pasta, garlic, ginger, pepper and lemon for potatoes.

It is preferable to stay away from the use of ready-made broth cubes that are high in sodium, preservatives and hydrogenated fats and replace them with homemade broth with less fat and less salt and with different spices and spices.

And to improve some foods, such as vegetables, and the palatability of their taste, grilling and baking them may be the best way, such as bell peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, fennel, squash and parsnips.

Avoid using ready-made tomato sauces and replace them with fresh tomatoes.

6- Avoid foods high in sodium.

Sauces, soy and its products, mustard, pickles, pressed olives, mayonnaise. They contain a high amount of sodium and it is preferable to avoid eating them.

7. Be smart about your choices when dining out.

When you eat ready-made food, choose foods that contain less sodium than others, for example:
– Choose vegetable or chicken pizza, instead of choosing pizza that is higher with sauces and cheese in its content, and stay away from pizza that contains red meat and processed and ready meat.
– Choose pasta dishes with vegetables, chicken and tomato sauce instead of cheese, sausages and ready-made meat.
– Try to choose salads instead of burgers high with cheese, meat and sauce.
– When choosing sandwiches, choose sandwiches that are richer in their content of salads and vegetables, and less in fat and sodium sources, such as mayonnaise, mustard, sauces and cheese.
Choose dairy and baked goods that are lower in sodium.

8- Pay attention to the nutritional supplements and medicines you take:

Some types of effervescent (soluble) vitamins are high in their content of sodium, their salt content may reach approximately 1 g per tablet, so it is worth paying attention to their content and replacing them with tablets.

It is also worth noting that some medicines may contain very high levels of sodium, and we mention the following:

Certain antacids.

Laxatives, some types of laxatives and laxatives.

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – NSAID anti-inflammatory and anti-infective drugs.