Choose Your Food With Care And Reduce Your Blood Pressure
Author: Donald Saunders
Category: Health
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Figures show that there are approximately 73 million adults in the United States alone today who are suffering from high blood pressure and that over 50,000 individuals will die as a direct result of this problem during the next year. Sadly, many of these deaths could be prevented and one of the quickest and simplest ways to lower your blood pressure is to change your eating habits.
We have seen significant changes in our lifestyles in the last few years and one especially significant change for most of us is seen in the food we eat. Those times of three home-cooked meals each day are long gone and have been replaced by to a large extend by convenience foods and fast food which has led to a variety of different problems including the rising problems of both obesity and high blood pressure. Happily, this is one state of affairs which it is very easy to reverse.
There are two main difficulties with many convenience and fast foods and these are salt and fat, both of which raise your blood pressure.
Salt is added to an enormous range of food during processing to both add flavor and to act as a preservative and your daily salt intake can be extremely high without you adding further salt to your food at the table. Canned foods in particular normally contain very high levels of salt as do frozen dinners and pizza, so look closely at the labeling and determine just how much salt (sodium) products have in them before you purchase them. Your total daily intake of sodium should be as low as possible but should not be more than 2,400 milligrams which is about a teaspoonful.
Fat is another enemy when it comes to high blood pressure and, while a bit of fat in your diet is good for you, you should avoid high fat food whenever possible. In addition to fats and oils themselves (such as butter, margarine, lard, vegetable oil and meat dripping) many of our favorite foods are very high in fat. look out for foods such as cream, fried chicken, corned beef, sausages, pastries, regular ground beef, salami, whole milk, cookies, bacon, cakes, cheddar, french fries, ice cream, nuts, pies, cream cheese and almost all fast foods.
At this stage you might be thinking that this list of food items covers just about everything you eat and that if you cut all this out of your diet you will starve to death. The good news is that nothing could be farther from the truth and that the choice of foods open to you is enormous. There are two ways to deal with this problem.
The first method is to just replace items in your current diet with food items which are lower in fat or salt. For instance, you might replace ordinary full-fat milk with semi-skimmed or half-fat milk and regular ground beef with ground lean beef.
The second method is to introduce new foods into your diet and to replace some of your current favorite high fat foods. For instance, add more fresh fruit and vegetables into your meal plan and replace french fries with baked or boiled potatoes and instead of frying your food {try grilling|grill it. Not only is grilled fish and meat far better for you but it also tastes delicious.
High blood pressure really does not need to be a problem for the majority of us and some simply changes to what we eat can solve the problem easily and quickly.
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Keywords: high blood pressure, hypertension, lower blood pressure, food and blood pressure
View Count: 58
Date Submitted: 5/11/2008
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