BLW + salt

[Blackalice]

Hi everyone

Is anyone else struggling to give family foods without exceeding the salt limits? Even though I cook rather than do ready meals, a lot of the ingredients I use contain salt, such as passata, gnocchi, curry pastes, cheese etc. Also, it's hard to do breakfasts, lunches and dinners with the right balance of carbs/protein (we don't eat meat) and not a lot of salt (eg bread and cheese and cereals are high in salt) How is everyone else managing??

Thanks

for breakfast we give ds toast with unsalted butter (going to get a bread maker to cut salt right down) or a banana.
Intead of buying sauces make your own, hummas,

Hi Blackalice - it's not easy is it. I'm another passata and tinned tomato user, and am disappointed that I can't seem to find either without salt. Was quite suprised the other day to find that tomato puree has no salt though, so may try watering that down instead of using passata.

DD doesn't have cheese as she's milk intolerant, but I've always wondered how people reconcile the general goodness of the cheese with the high salt content.

Suggest puffed wheat for salt free cereal that can be eaten with fingers.

Doesn't really matter how much salt I put in her food at the moment though, as she's hardly eaten a thing for the last couple of weeks (sickness bug then teething)!

Hi

Sorry to hear DD's been ill

I've found that Tesco Value tinned chopped toms ahve no added salt. Tesco Value wheat biscuits are also lower insalt than Weetabix. It seems cheap is your friend salt wise LOL!

I've been considering skinning and blending my own tomatoes but time is of the essence and I really don't have the energy LOL!

Beck xxx

I didn't know tinned tomatoes had salt

Luckily I am a tesco value chopped gal, so apparently mine don't

I think if I remeber correctly Aitch once suggested to scoop out baby's meal and then add salt to the food for yourself.

Unfortunately any sort of processed (even lighly processed food) has salt, there was a thread on tuna recently about the same thing!

I might be going off on a tangent here as it doesn't apply to babies but we do actually need some salt in our diets, and so do children. There is really no need to cut it right out of adult and older children's food, we couldn't survive without salt in our bodies and it is especially important in hot weather as we can't sweat without it.

my ds's dietician has told me to cut out salt entirely for a few weeks to see if it helps his problems. really difficult as salt seems to be added into sweet things so much as well which i cant understand

Asda do a passata without salt - not their own brand, but an italian brand I think in a glass bottle.

I think it would be very difficult to cut it out entirely rosie, so can imagine you're having a right time of it 7up!

Thanks for that tip ilovecaboose - that's a second product worth me going to asda for!

i buy those tarantella organic tomatoes (cheaper than napolina ones if you buy them by the slab in costco) and i've just checked and it says 'trace' sodium on them.
with things like soup i tend to make my own stocks and then use them, if the soup neds extra salt or stock it's easy enough to do it at the table. (we use marigold low-salt bouillon anyway, and just sprinkle it on daintily. we look like a pair of idiots, obviously).
other than that, we don't give dd cheese more than once a day and we eat a lot of beans and lentils as protein. tbh i'm not hugely beating myself up about the salt thing... as long as she's eating enough fruit and veg and drinking enough liquid then i reckon that the salt load will be dispersed so it won't hit her little kidneys in a oner. of course i've got no idea if that's actually how it works... does anyone know if there's a doctor in the house?

Aitch - I make my own chicken stock, but haven't ever done beef/lamb stock - is it easy to make - what do I need?

Personally, I just didn't worry about salt much. As long as they're not living on Smash, I think babies (over 6 months) are ok on grownup food.

Well, ok, you need to be a bit more careful than that, but still ... we went on holiday when DS2 was not yet 1, and he lived on restaurant food for weeks, and lived to tell the tale.

Damn, CSWS crosses Smash off her shopping list.

I actually met a mum locally whose child lived on a mix of tinned beans, corned beef, and mash. I hope it was real mash, but suspect it was Smash.

This baby also loved Coke.

I don't remember exactly how old he was, but I think he was about 8 months.

Oh NQC. Poor baby.

Yeah, not nice. Poor mum, too - she didn't like the baby having coke, but the dad had given the baby some, and the baby really liked it. (Gah. My DS1 is 5 now. Still hasn't had Coke.)

I think the mum wasn't happy about the baby living on tinned beans etc, but was having a hard time changing things.

erk... i really only make chicken stock, too. and veggie stock (or chicken stock without the chicken, as we call it). or marigold (or some old stock cubes i got in france as i'm convinced everythign french tastes better.)
what do you need beef and lamb stock for..? you must be a proper cook, i'm ever so impressed.

But that baby seemed ok, despite all that. And a friend of mine has four DDs, she did BLW with the last two, and would just let them have anything she was eating, lots of cafe food, whatever whatever, and they're all fine too. (I remember her letting DD3 have some champagne at a birthday party. Her DD was at most 7 months.)

My DD ate some earth today . Should I let her have it every day as she seemed to like it .

Aitch - not sure exactly what classifies as a 'proper' cook, but I am known in my circle of friends as being the cook - just hearty home cooked food .

I tend to use Bovril at the moment as I think it's a bit less salty than oxo, and DD really doesn't have much (the floor is still getting most of her food unfortunately), but wish I could be bothered to get meat bones from a butcher and do it all from scratch.

but what do you actually use the Bovril for? what recipes, i mean?

Well today I used it just to cook braising steak in in the slow cooker (good finger food if you haven't tried it btw - holds together well for picking up but falls apart in mouth), but I use it in all sorts of casseroles, add a bit to bolognese sauce/shepherds pie type stuff, err, can't think what else offhand, but it's just second nature to me to put it in most stuff!

When DS started solids we changed our diets completely (we were ready meal addicts prior to that) when we realised that we didnt want him eating any of it (& were rather shocked at just how much crap we did eat ). Pretty much everthing we eat now is freshly prepared with minimal processed foods & we dont add any salt to anything anymore, before or after cooking.

Bread & cheese werent too much of an issue for DS when he was little as he didint have gluten or dairy unitl he was over 1 & so the salt issue wasnt too critical...but even then we minimised it by making our own bread & not giving cheese too often. Cereals were easy as well - when he started eating gluten we had plain porridge so no salt at all & the only processed cereal hes had since is weetabix & we now usually buy Bio Biz which has less salt & no added sugar.

Once you start cutting salt out of your diet you start to notice just how salty restaurant food & processed stuff is....makes you eat a lot better as well - you start noticing just how crap some things taste without it so you buy better quality meat, veg etc .

We are by no means perfect - salted butter, sausages & bacon see to that....but just be being aware of salt & other unecessary additives means we eat a lot better now...the general rule we have is if we can make it ourselves then we try to do so.

The 6g for adults is an absolute max and we only actually need about 1.5g so obviously as mall child will only need a very small amount as well - quite a scary thought, especially when you start reading into the damage too much salt can do....

i see the sort of thing. what about wine? that's what i use to enrich spag bols and stews and whatnot. if you boil it the alcohol comes off, and i reckon it's salt-free (although tbh i've never once checked the label).
i completely agree with terramum, by the way, about not adding salt to things. we use a lot more fresh herbs now, and are forever squeezing lemon onto and into chicken etc. thyme, bay and rosemary are woody so they last a long time in the fridge and work out relatively inexpensive. beer is excellent for stews as well.
the downside to using less salt, i find, is that eating out is less pleasurable. we went out last week and spent half the time going 'wtf?' and glugging down water...
although really i would have to say that a spot of bovril mixed in with a lot of liquid isn't probably oging to do any harm. i wouldn't have thought that the meat would absorb horrific amounts, but of course i might be wrong about that.
oh for the record with the wine i keep ends of bottles in bags in the freezer and i also buy those wee mini-bottles when they are on offer in the supermarket for when i can't be arsed opening a whole one.

I've never added salt to food, but we don't eat out much (DH lives/works abroad so eats out a lot then, and enjoys home cooked stuff when he's here, apart from the fact that eating out whilst avoiding dairy is a pain in the nether regions!), so don't notice the difference often.

I'm glad to hear of someone else freezing the wine leftovers. I've been doing it for years, but haven't found anyone else who does before! I can't imagine there'd be salt in wine - would taste pretty yuk I'd think! I am, of course, off wine at the moment too, as I'm still bf'ing, but we do sometimes open a bottle if we have friends round. All I need to do is persuade them not to drink it all so that I have some left for cooking .

terramum, our food history is pretty much the same - before DS1 started eating solids, DH and I lived on ready meals and meals out. Now I cook pretty much everything we eat.

It's weird how dishes that used to be incredibly fiddly and impossible are now pretty easy to make. (Well, not for DH, he still doesn't cook, unfortunately.)