I wasnt sure where else to post this? My father-in-law had to get a pacemaker and defibulator(sp?) a couple of weeks ago and was told he can no longer have table salt at all. He is very limited on sodium period but one teaspoon of table salt is way more mgs than he is allowed per day so he is having to remove that from his diet completely. My mother-in=law is having a hard time finding things to cook for him that he actually likes. The doc recommended not using anything in her cooking that has 140 or more mgs of sodium per serving.

Has anyone had experience with this already that might have some good recipes they could try? Now that we're all reading labels, it's unbelievable how much sodium practically everything has. She cant use any canned soups for casseroles, etc because even the lowest sodium ones are too high in sodium. Even something as simple as a hamburger, he has to use plain bread because a bun has too much sodium.

I'd appreciate any ideas!

Thanks,
Miki

My father went through something similar and we all started noticing how much sodium was in food, and it really was shocking. Even something as simple as cottage cheese contains a lot of sodium.

Are you familiar with the Rice Diet? It's not rice as in the grain, but as in Rice University. It's a very restrictive weight loss diet, but it's also very restrictive in sodium. They have a book and cookbook available that offer tons of tips for reducing sodium in foods and is really helpful. I think the American Heart Association also has a low sodium cookbook out.

There are good alternatives out there, but sometimes it takes searching. For example, Old El Paso salsa has about 230 mg sodium per 2 Tablespoon serving. But some other brands, such as Frog Ranch, contain just 40 mg and taste fantastic.

Good luck to your FIL

Here are a few links that might be helpful, the have products you can buy that are low sodium. You could google many more I'm sure, hope it helps.

http://www.healthyheartmarket.com/br...cts/Index.html
one of these has real larvae worms, umm, yea eww!

http://www.firegirl.com/sodiumfree.html


http://www.traderjoes.com/labels_and_lists.html
click on the low sodium link on this one

Giving up sodium is very hard -- at first -- but after a little while, your system comes around to liking the 'real taste' of food again. Sort of like doing the changeover from full-fat-milk to skim.

Thanks everyone for your input. I appreciate it!