Saturday, July 05, 2003
Got back from a late supper. Eating out becomes something of a challenge when one is supposed to avoid sodium. So many things in restaurants have sauce on them, and sauce is pretty salt-laden. So there are some rules of thumb for eating at restaurants: avoid stuff with lots of sauce, avoid fried foods, avoid processed meats, blah blah blah. What is harder to figure out is what, besides green salad with no dressing, you can eat. So here's some things I've discovered:
Entrees with fruit in them are likely to have less salt than other entrees. Look for things with pineapple, in particular. In Mexican restaurants, this may mean a taco of shrimp and pineapple; in Chinese restaurants, it may mean sweet-and-sour something. These aren't completely salt-free, but they do have less salt than other dishes from the same menus. Luby's Cafeterias have a carrot-and-pineapple salad...
Baked potato. Ask if the kitchen has unsalted butter, and use a small slice of that, and ONE TEASPOON of sour cream. (So ask for the sour cream on the side.) Don't get bacon bits or cheese, but if they offer chives or green onions, or sliced mushrooms, put lots of them on the potato.
Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese is much lower in sodium than most cheeses; lower, in fact, than many "reduced sodium" cheeses. So you can get something with cheese on it, if the cheese is Swiss. Swiss cheese varieties include Emmenthaler and Gruyere. A sandwich of Swiss cheese and veggies is a good choice. One of my favorite places to eat serves a sandwich called the Flamingo: Swiss cheese, avocado (the good kind of fat!), bean sprouts, and tomatoes. I eat it without any mayo, of course.
Red Lobster has teriyaki-glazed fish, a couple different kinds. Of them, the tilapia, or rockfish, is the cheapest. The teriyaki glaze is surprisingly low-sodium, and according to published reports, that entree has only about 475 milligrams of sodium. Get a plain salad and a plain baked potato with it, and you're good to go. (Avoid those cheese biscuits, though!!)
If you're a meat eater, a small filet mignon has less sodium than any other beef entree on a steak menu. Provided, of course, that it is NOT served with bacon wrapped around it.
There, hope that helps. It's not a complete list, of course. But I'm glad to be able to give some specific suggestions of things one can eat, instead of all those lists of things not to eat.
One of the things that annoys me about restaurants lately is that here in Texas, the price of iced tea has been going steadily up. I don't know why that should be; the wholesale price of tea has not had any sudden drastic increases. But now a lot of restaurants are charging over $1.50 a glass for tea, and I don't think there's a glass of tea in the world worth $1.65, let alone $1.95. Just as well, I suppose, since I'm only supposed to have one cup of black tea a day, to keep down the caffeine, but still... Incidentally, the tea served in most Chinese and other Asian restaurants is often Jasmine tea, usually a green tea, so you can drink more of that, because it's got much less caffeine than black tea. Still, of course, following your doctor's recommendations as to total liquid intake for the day.
There, hope that helps. It's not a complete list, of course. But I'm glad to be able to give some specific suggestions of things one can eat, instead of all those lists of things not to eat.
One of the things that annoys me about restaurants lately is that here in Texas, the price of iced tea has been going steadily up. I don't know why that should be; the wholesale price of tea has not had any sudden drastic increases. But now a lot of restaurants are charging over $1.50 a glass for tea, and I don't think there's a glass of tea in the world worth $1.65, let alone $1.95. Just as well, I suppose, since I'm only supposed to have one cup of black tea a day, to keep down the caffeine, but still... Incidentally, the tea served in most Chinese and other Asian restaurants is often Jasmine tea, usually a green tea, so you can drink more of that, because it's got much less caffeine than black tea. Still, of course, following your doctor's recommendations as to total liquid intake for the day.
