Dr. Joe Galati's Blog

Olive Garden Food Is A Hazard To Your Health

You can eat where every you'd like to. Eat as much as you want. I cannot control that behavior. What I try and do, both with my own patients, and listeners of Your Health First, is to enlighten them to the hazards we all face regarding our health and wellness.

As a country, we eat out far too much. The portions are enormous. The salt (sodium) content is excessive, and the fat and calories of these meals is a leading cause of both adult and childhood obesity. Hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney failure, and cancer are all complications of obesity. The cost to care for all of these people with make us all go broke. Obesity related care is expensive.

The Olive Garden has their nutritional information posted on their website. My family recently had the opportunity to dine there. They were all impressed with the lack of nutritious meals, and the contributions to the obesity problem this kind of a menu has. Reading it will both raise your blood pressure and make you sick. There is nothing healthy on the menu. As consumers, be aware of the salt, fat, and calorie content of the food you eat. Only then can we begin to put the brakes on obesity which is killing us all.

My podcast commentary from Your Health First is posted below.

Podcast: Olive Garden Commentary-Listen Here

 

New Low Salt Heinz Ketchup

We talk about excessive salt in the American dail all the time. Heinz has decided to cut 15% of the salt ouot of their world famous ketchup. This amounts to a 30 mg drop per serving. While this is a start, the few miligram difference is a drop in the water compared to the thousands of excessive miligrams we consume weekly.

Listen to the podcast for more details.

New Low Salt Ketchup Podcast

 

More on Salt Overload in the American Diet

TThe Institute of Medicine this past week came out with a report - once again - stating we are all taking in too much salt in our diet. Listen to this audio file for more details. Let me know what you think.

Sodium overload

Too Much Dietary Sodium: Interview with Jolene Vanderzyl, R.D.

Jolene Vanderzyl, a Registered  Dietitian with Sugar Lakes Family Practice, will join Dr. Galati tonight to discuss the problem of excessive dietary sodium (salt) in the American diet. For the past five years, we have been discussing the salt problem in our food, and while there have been some strides in changing our behavior, educating the general public is still priority number one.

 

Salt is everywhere in the food we eat. A day does not pass where I am instructing my own patients, as well as their family, on how to maintain a low sodium diet.  For patients with advanced liver disease and cirrhosis, we strive for a diet with no more than 2000 mg of sodium daily. In some cases, we need to go even lower. There is always great confusion regarding salt and sodium, and the foods to stay away from. Many times, patients will state "I haven't used salt in years", yet on a quick scan of their diet history, they are well over 2000 mg. How does this happen, you ask? I do not doubt the patient is telling the truth and retired their salt shaker years ago, yet the sodium content of prepared foods is huge, and this is what throws most everyone over the limit. Eating out regularly, or consuming prepared foods that you nuke, are all loaded with sodium. In addition, both of these activities will lead to obesity.

 

Links related to dietary sodium are listed here. Let us know what you think on this subject by commenting below.

 

Dangers of Dietary Sodium

 

More Bad New on Sodium

 

American Heart Association and Salt

Listen to the interview here

Low Salt Diets: More Education Needed

A delightful new patient was seen in the office today with the diagnosis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease that unfortunately had progressed to cirrhosis.  She was accompanied by her sister. They we both obese, on the borderline of morbid obesity. The cornerstone of treatment is to get her weight under control, and I estimated that she would have to lose approximately 75 pounds to get anywhere near a reasonable, safe body weight.  We discussed several strategies, but the one point that stood out is that she was consuming massive amounts of dietary sodium (salt). Here diet was a parade of processed, nutrient stripped foods, loaded with enough salt for a week. These were the foods she regularly consumed:

   Sodium per serving

Frozen dinners:   800 mg
Commercial vegetable juice:    650 mg
Canned corn: 610 mg
Packaged deli meats:     605 mg
Canned soups:    1025 mg
Chinese food:    3500 mg

Adding it all up, she was consuming well over 7,000 mg of sodium daily. Remember, patients with cirrhosis should shoot for 1800-2000 mg/day. On physical examination, she had well over 30 pounds of fluid hanging on her body.

The lesson once again is to be aware of the foods that are high in sodium.  You must read labels on the food you consume. The public needs to be re-educated on low salt diets. Parents with children equally need to be aware of this fact. It is impossible to maintain a low salt diet if you eat out on a regular basis. If for health reasons (heart failure, liver disease, kidney disease) you must be on a low salt diet, eating out has to be a thing of the past. It will save you money, and the the grief of being scolded by your physician.

Remember: CUT THE SALT!