Background May 15 2010

My 71 year old Mom was told to lose weight and follow a low-sodium diet. She doesn't have a computer and wasn't given any guidance by her doctor so I decided I would help her by doing the diet with her. The American Heart Association's recommendation is 1500mg of sodium daily. So we set that as our goal. I bought her some books, The DASH diet for Hypertension, The American Heart Association's Low-Salt Cookbook, and the Complete Food Counter.

My Mom lives on her on and is on a low fixed income. We went to the grocery store to stock up on low-sodium products. Low or no-sodium products are way more expensive than regular and very scarce. We managed to find some basic ingredients to get her started and I am hoping that I'll find more as we go on.

She likes to eat out with her friends a few times a week to socialize. They tend to go mainly to fast food or chain restaurants. I knew this was going to be a problem but had no idea how bad it was until we spent hours poring over nutritional information on the restaurants web sites and found the sodium counts, never mind the calorie counts, are off the charts. The Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken is 960mg WITHOUT dressing. Add a packet of Newman's Low Fat dressing for 730 mg. Oops - you're over your daily goal with 1 meal. She quickly realized going out to eat would have to be a once in awhile treat.