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Shake the salt and keep the taste
By Katie Jessop, registered dietitian, Heart and Stroke Foundation, Health Check
April 11, 2011
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What is shaking in menu development these days? Some food and nutrition trends don’t change very much. Taste is always important for customers. A Canadian Council of Food and Nutrition report confirms that taste is still number one. But this same report also reveals that nutrition is a pretty close second. Increasingly Canadians are looking for dishes that are not only good to their taste buds but also good for their health.
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Salt is an important nutrient, and essential to our diet, but Canadians are consuming too much of it. In fact, Canadians consume more than 3, 500 mg of sodium (the main ingredient in salt) each day. This number should be closer to between 1, 500 – 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day, which is about one teaspoon of salt. Too much sodium increases the risk for high blood pressure (hypertension) and it has been estimated that high levels of sodium consumption are responsible for one million hypertension cases per year. In all about five million Canadian adults have hypertension which is the number one risk factor for stroke and a major risk factor for heart disease.
Most of the salt that Canadians eat – almost 80 per cent – comes from packaged foods and the meals they buy when dining out. Only about 10 per cent of the sodium Canadians consume comes from the salt shaker on the table, and the remaining amount is naturally occurring in foods.
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Canadians love to eat out, and they want menu choices that are both delicious and nutritious. Restaurants have an important role to play in delivering on both of these fronts. Here are some tips for restaurants to help their customers cut back on salt:
- Offer nutrition information for all menu items to allow consumers to make informed, healthy choices.
- Leave the salt shaker off the tables and offer fresh ground pepper and other spice options when meals are served.
- Make broth, sauces and gravy from scratch, and if adding salt, limit the amount.
- Use fresh or dried herbs, spices, flavoured vinegars or lemon juice instead of salt to enhance flavour.
- Beware of prepared condiments such as ketchup, relish, and soy sauce which can be high in sodium. Bottled salad dressing can also be high in both sodium and fat.
- Check the nutrition facts on all ingredients, and choose ingredients that are lower in sodium such as sodium-reduced soy sauce. Ask your suppliers for low-sodium ingredients.
- Ask your suppliers for Health Check products. All products with the Health Check symbol have met nutrient criteria (including sodium) developed by the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s registered dietitians based on recommendations in Canada’s Food Guide.
- Ask your local culinary school about seminars on healthy cooking including lower salt cooking.
For more information visit healthcheck.org.
About the author:
Katie Jessop is a registered dietitian with the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Health Check program. She works with foodservice suppliers and operators to develop and promote foods that meet the Health Check nutrition criteria. You can reach Katie at kjessop@hsf.ca.
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