ROTATION DIET: AN IMPORTANT WORD ABOUT SALT

The use of salt will impede your weight loss. Either use no salt at all in food preparation or, as I suggest in my recipes, add only the smallest amount, to taste. Many persons find they can cut back on salt considerably if they wait until after their food is cooked before adding any. Soy sauce is also somewhat high in sodium (about one-seventh the concentration of salt granules, or about 285 milligrams per teaspoon, compared with 2000 to 2200 milligrams for salt). Therefore, do not exceed the amounts called for when I suggest the use of soy sauce in my recipes. Also look for reduced-sodium soy sauces, which are widely available and taste just as good. pharmaoffshore.com

If you generally use salt, by all means try my recipe for Herb Salt. Herb Salt has one-seventh the amount of sodium in plain salt, which means that it has far less sodium in it than many commercially blended salt substitutes. Whereas just one-eighth teaspoon of salt has between 250 and 275 milligrams of sodium, Herb Salt has about 40 milligrams. Although Herb Salt has the same relative proportion of sodium to salt as does regular soy sauce, it is safer to use than soy sauce because you will tend to use much less of it. (Some salt substitutes completely replace the sodium component with potassium, but they tend not to taste nearly as good as Herb Salt.)

A cup of commercially prepared soup, such as mushroom, may contain nearly 1000 milligrams of sodium - in one cup! Ditto for a single serving of a frozen diet-dinner main course. As in the case of a pickle, that much sodium can lead to pounds of water retention.

Since my menus often call for crackers, look for the low-salt or no-salt varieties.

Many packagers of foods (canned and frozen) have taken note of the new salt consciousness and now label some products "no salt added." You may wish to try some of these.

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