Diet Solutions for a Big-Hearted Couple With High Blood Pressure

DOUG: I'm Doug Steingraber. This is my wife Sara.

I take one day a week and I go by and visit heart patients at a local hospital. It's part of our Mended Hearts program.

We're all heart survivors and we want to tell our story to the patients,

Each morning you gotta get up. You want to exercise.

SARA: Both Doug and I have high blood pressure and we take medicine, high blood pressure medicine for that. And we try to watch what we eat.

DOUG: Sticking to a low sodium diet is a real challenge. Eating out in any restaurant, it's a challenge...just eating at home when you're making quick meals, it's a challenge.

I guess it's ironic. Here I am talking to people about being healthy about their heart and their diet and I still need some help myself! We need a LOT of help!

CAROLYN: Hello. Sara: Hi. Carolyn: I'm Carolyn O'Neil. I know that you're Doug and Sara. I'm a registered dietitian and I heard that you're in need of a food rescue. Doug: We sure are. Absolutely.

Well most importantly was meeting Doug and Sara, seeing how motivated they were and seeing what they're already doing right and then maybe helping to fill in some gaps where they can make some additional improvements and also do things more conveniently.

Well, Sara, I want to say that I already noticed two things, a fruit bowl, very excited to see this, and the spice rack. And that is because, I think when you're cooking for heart healthy cooking specifically to lower your blood pressure, it's important to add fresh fruits and vegetables. They're a great source of potassium. And potassium is the mineral that's kind of the good guy that works in opposition of sodium to help lower your blood pressure.

DOUG: I was never told that.

CAROLYN: and your spice rack, Sara, very excited because a gain, gotta work on ways to add flavor to food. We don't want boring food, if it's gonna be lower in salt.

CAROLYN: Just limiting the amount of salt you put on your food is really not enough if you're on a low sodium diet.

CAROLYN: It's also really good to compare like products, not apples to oranges, but let's say in this case, diced tomatoes to diced tomatoes. One is no salt added and one is just the regular diced tomatoes. And Sara, look at how dramatic the difference is, can you read that to us?

SARA: 220mg half cup versus 20 mg. Wow, so that's a big difference!

CAROLYN: Have you heard of the dash diet?

DOUG AND SARA: No

CAROLYN: Okay. Well, DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

More fruits, vegetables, more whole grains like whole grain cereals, brown rice, popcorn counts as a whole grain, more nonfat dairy and lean protein. It should be enjoyable, so you're happy with your food. And that means that flavor really is paramount when you're looking at new recipes.

CAROLYN: So, do you like to cook?

SARA: I do, I like to cook when I have time.

CAROLYN: Just looking in your refrigerator it looks like you have the makings of a lot of great foods...ah, you know, it's just keeping that pantry stocked and knowing about some of those products to have on hand like the frozen rice that we're gonna be doing something even more jazzy with.

The rice dish I call confetti rice because of all the colors that are in there. Let's see, we have carrots and yellow squash and green zucchini and then rosemary for flavor and of course a little garlic too.

SARA: It's gonna look so cheerful.

CAROLYN: Doesn't it, all the colors?

Adding flavor without adding sodium is actually pretty easy. You just gotta look beyond salt to other acidy things like lemon or vinegars, adding wine in cooking, adding herbs, fresh herbs are often really really distinct in flavor.

SARA: It looks wonderful, this looks so good.

CAROLYN: And kinda fast food, wouldn't you say?

SARA: Yes, very fast.

CAROLYN: WHen you think about it, you gotta chop the vegetables, the rice was certainly easy in the microwave, the carrots are already chopped up for us, and yo know it's like one zucchini and a couple of yellow squash and we are done.

SARA: Carolyn taught us that with a little bit of rice and a few chopped vegetables we can make anything with a little bit of herbs and spices

DOUG: And it's simple what she did, that's what made it very, I think enjoyable too. It didn't take long, it was easy to prepare.

SARA: I know we're gonna be in good shape going forward.

This entry last modified on: January 10, 2012 10:46 PM