I recently wrote about high blood pressure, and the adverse effects of various over-the-counter cold medications (see my post entitled"Heavy Breathing"). The truth is, the biggest blood pressure offender is not cold medication, it is food.
Not pure, natural, out-of-the-ground or fresh-off-the-tree food. Not even hot-off-the-hoof food, (or just-off-the-hook), for those of you who eat meat or fish.
No, the biggest silent offender is PROCESSED food. Anything out of a can, a box, a package of any kind, microwaved, heated, re-heated, served in a fast food, family style, sidewalk cafe or in (most) sit-down restaurants. In short, almost anything that you (or your Mom) did not grow in your backyard or make from scratch, from known fresh ingredients, in your own kitchen.
What do I mean by "processed"? Anything that is done to our food to make it cheaper, quicker, easier to prepare; to preserve it, give it a longer shelf life, make it transportable to other places, make it look a certain way on supermarket shelves, or in magazine ads; to give it a certain color or smell or shape so that kids will eat it; to make it look like "fun" so that WE will eat it.
It is the difference between a hamburger and a Big Mac; the difference between an apple and a bottle of "apple juice"; between cheese and Cheese Doodles. It is the reason why chicken has become one of the cheapest and most popular food items in the U.S., but also the reason why our girls look like grown women by the age of 10. (Most of the chickens are injected with hormones, which...sorry, I digress).
Aside from the aforementioned horemones which are injected into the chickens and cows to plump them up and make them resistant to disease (OOOOOOPs, there I go again!) the major offending ingredient in processed foods is SALT. In its many forms. Usually alot of it, and sometimes appearing several times, on the same ingredient label, under various different names.
(Salt is usually added at some point during the manufacturing, canning, or packaging process, as a preservative, and to kill certain pathogens which can contaminate the "food" being packaged. It has, of course, long been used as a preservative, having something to do with absorbing and removing the water from the food, which is good if you are going on a long ocean voyage and don't want the herring to spoil before you leave Europe to colonize the world, but may, in fact, be somewhat irrelevant now, in light of our many technological advances. Meaning - if we can get to the moon, invent Twitter, and put subway maps onto the iPhone, WHY CAN'T WE PACKAGE OUR FOOD WITHOUT SALT??)
Salt.Sodium. Potassium Chloride. Sodium Phosphate. All of these are some form of salt, and are listed on the label of a can of Progresso Traditional Chickarina Soup, which accounts for why one serving of the soup has 690 mgs of sodium. And, since one 19 0z. can supposedly serves two people, eating the whole can would mean consuming 1380 mgs of sodium! in one meal! which is why I do not eat it.
Ah, yes, there are SO many things that I no longer eat, and so many that I do but know I should not (as previously discussed, I am mildly hypertensive, which means that I am at risk for high blood pressure). Pizza, Chinese food of any kind, Ragu spaghetti sauce from a jar, those packaged grain/rice blends from Near East that go so well with Uncle Steve's turkey at Thanksgiving; anything from Outback Steak House, Burger King, Wendy's, McDonald's or Starbuck's; "Little Bit of Everything Soup" from Ollie's, the chicken wings at Havana Central (oh, but I do!), Annie's Natural Goddess Dressing, the list is endless and depressing.
Takeout sushi with the soy sauce. The turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce on whole wheat from Fairway. Bagels. Cookies from anywhere. Soda (well, I don't drink it anyway, but that's largely because of the sugar, which I will talk about in a future post).
Shoot me now, please.
I've gotten so militant and obnoxious about salt that my Mom, the lovely Joan, reacts with surprise anytime she sees me with a salt shaker in my hand at dinner. To which I reply, "Mom, remember, it is not TABLE salt which causes the problem". It is not, indeed. That which we add ourselves at the table represents a mere fraction of what commercial cooks and food manufacturers put into our food, and, as such, poses little problem. Sprinkling a bit on top of our food is OK. Dumping vast quantities of salt into a recipe in the commercial kitchen, is not.
Which is why Mayor Bloomberg, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, and NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley have all taken a stand against the high salt content of processed foods and restaurant meals, calling for a voluntary effort on the part of New York City restaurants and national food manufacturers to substantially reduce the sodium in restaurant and packaged foods by 25% over the next 5 years. To which some people have reacted with typical arrogance and ignorance, i.e. "I don't want people telling me what I can and cannot eat" yayayayayayayablahblahblah.
To which I, for one, say, "Thank you. IT'S ABOUT TIME".
I feel a book coming on...
