A LS/LF Product from a Fortune 500 Company!

Wish-Bone® Salad Spritzers®

Lest readers feel your blogger discriminates against Fortune 500 companies, this post deals positively with a product from Unilever, a multinational conglomerate that is ranked 81 on the Fortune Global 500 list.

This shows that even megacorporations can make healthy products! (Although often they do the opposite.) So don't just confine your shopping to the organic aisle of your supermarket or a health food store.

Salad Spritzers are a line of salad dressings in spray bottles that have some oil in them and some salt, but keep the total rather low.

As seem in the nutrition data here the fat and sodium scores are 4% DV or less. This varies somewhat among the 8 flavors:

BALSAMIC BREEZE® VINAIGRETTE

ITALIAN VINAIGRETTE

RED WINE MIST VINAIGRETTE

CAESAR DELIGHT® VINAIGRETTE

RASPBERRY BLISS® VINAIGRETTE

ASIAN SILK™ VINAIGRETTE

RANCH

HONEY MUSTARD BUZZ®

There is always the chance they will change the ingredients or introduce a new flavor with less healthy ingredients - remember this is not marketed as a LS/LF product in any way. So always check the label at purchase.

I find the 10 sprays serving size realistic, but even if you use more the total is still rather low.

So, Unilever keep up the good work! Let's see if you can offer more products like this.

NY Times: Throwing the Book at Salt

Today's New York Times had a great article on the efforts of the New York City government to control salt in foods - something that FDA has been disinterested in and ineffective at. The articles starts,

"Dr. Thomas R. Friedan invited some of the biggest names in food processing to lunch last October. Grilled salmon and green salad were on the menu, but the subject was salt.

After a string of victories over smoking, trans fats and calories, Dr. Frieden, the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a new campaign: to lower the amount of sodium America eats."

The gist of Dr. Friedan's efforts are then stated:

"When the food company executives had finished lunch, Dr. Frieden made his pitch: Over the next five years, identify the foods that are contributing the most sodium to people’s diets and cut the level of salt by 25 percent. In a decade, cut it by another 25 percent. And do it in unison with your competitors.

If they refuse?

“If there’s not progress in a few years, we’ll have to consider other options, like legislation,” he said in an interview last week."

The article points out that men are consuming 48 percent more salt than they did in the early 1970s, and women, 69 percent more, so the trend is now in the wrong direction.

In an attached graphic, linked to picture at left, the Times highlights foods where a single serving has a significant amount of the recommended daily salt for healthy people. It is particularly interesting that Kashi Heart to Heart Waffles get special attention. In the Hall of Shame section of the companion website, lowsaltlowfat.com , we have been pointing out for months that the rest of Kashi's "Heart to Heart" product line is actively promoted as a low salt and low fat heart healthy product line. When we first "promoted" this product to the "Hall of Shame" the Kashi website even called the waffles "low salt" as shown in the image from the website at the time:

Kashi did remove the "low sodium" after I pointed it out to them but never acknowledged in writing their error and continues to sell the product with nearly identical labeling with the rest of the Heart to Heart product line - which is actively promoted as being low in both salt and fat.

Now Kashi is really a good source of LS/LF products especially for breakfast cereals. Indeed, you may well find out that the majority of low salt cereals in your supermarket are from Kashi. But their misleading labeling of the high sodium waffles with nearly identical packaging with a LS/LF product line is unethical and borders on the illegal. While the Bush FDA and FTC refused to address this issue, hopefully the new leadership at FDA and FTC will.

Meanwhile we suggest you contact Kashi (and their corporate masters at Kellogg's) and tell them they are doing a great job on many of their products but it is time to either get the salt out of the waffles or relabel them clearly.

Soups and the LS/LF Diet

Tradition tells us that soup is healthy. However, most of the soups and soup mixes on the US market are sky high in salt. An old standby, Campbell's Condensed Chicken Noodle has 890 mg of sodium/serving, not to mention 15 mg of cholesterol.

Beef bouillon cubes may have no cholesterol, but the Herb-Ox brand, for example, has 750 mg of sodium/serving.

In recent years, companies like Campbell's have been trying to "improve their act" with lines of soup labeled "25% less sodium" or "Healthy Request" - which even bears the AHA "heart-check mark" (which only addresses fat content not sodium content). For the general population these do indeed have less sodium than normal products, but these still have high sodium levels and are best avoided by those who need LS/LF diets.

The words "Low Sodium" have a legal meaning in the US of a product having less than 140 mg of sodium/serving. You probably should restrict your soup consumption to either home made soups where you know the ingredients or prepared products labeled "low sodium".

It is amusing that Campbell's uses the logo at left for their low sodium products with the words "for sodium restricted diets". Does Campbell's want you to think that these products are dangerous for others? Or having been partially responsible for addicting the US public to high salt input they fear that a tasty low salt product will ruin their reputation among the addicted? Campbell's makes low salt soups inthe following types: Chicken Broth, Chicken with Noodles Soup, Chunky Vegetable Beef Soup, Cream of Mushroom Soup, Split Pea Soup, Tomato with Tomato Pieces Soup. While these are sold in mainstream stores, I have never seen more than 2 flavors in the same store. (Note that the Cream of Mushroom is also convenient for making sauces for casseroles.)

The Health Valley brand of the Hain Celestial Group is a good source of low sodium soups and has 8 flavors as opposed to megacorporation Campbell's 6: No Salt Added Organic Vegetable Soup, No Salt Added Organic Tomato Soup, No Salt Added Organic Split Pea Soup, No Salt Added Organic Potato Leek Soup, No Salt Added Organic Mushroom Barley Soup, No Salt Added Organic Minestrone Soup, No Salt Added Organic Lentil Soup, No Salt Added Organic Black Bean Soup. Note that the other Health Valley soups not labeled "No Salt Added" are actually lower in sodium than Campbell's "lower sodium" or "Healthy Request".

The Health Valley Fat Free Zesty Black Bean with Rice Soup Cup is an instant soup in a cup that has zero fat and 240 mg of sodium, not low enough to be called "low salt", but rather close. [Note as Don pointed out in a reply to this post, the 240 mg of sodium is really for 1/2 of the serving cup - an unrealistic serving. So I withdraw this bean soup as a suggestion. - Jay] They also make a Organic Mild Vegetarian No Salt Added Chili with 1 g of fat and 75 mg of sodium/serving. While Hain/Health Valley is mainly sold in health food stores, many mainstream supermarkets sell a limited selection of their products.

Trader Joe's is a privately owned chain of 315 stores in 26 states. They have an unadvertised policy of carrying a wide variety of low sodium foods, some of which are hard to find elsewhere. Most products in Trader Joe's are house brands, not found elsewhere. In the soup category, these include Organic Creamy Tomato Soup Low Sodium, Organic Low Sodium Minestrone, Organic Low Sodium Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup, Low Sodium Chicken Pasta Soup, Organic Butternut Squash Soup.

The only LS/LF dry soup mix for quick cooking I have found is Goodman's Noodle Soup with 95 g of sodium/serving and 1 g of fat.

Broth/Stock Options

Prepared broth and stock both makes a refreshing light dish and is a convenient ingredient for more complex soups and sauces. Adding fresh vegetables is an easy way to make an interesting soup from the broths and stocks given below. While canned and frozen vegetables can be used also, note that many canned vegetables and some frozen vegetables have high salt levels - so check labels. Dried products such as rice, beans, lentils, etc. usually have no added salt and low sodium levels.

Health Valley makes No Salt Added Fat Free Beef Broth and No Salt Added Low Fat Chicken Broth in 14 oz. cans. Campbell's, as stated above, also makes low salt chicken broth in cans.


The sources below all have broth/stock in 32 oz. cartons:



The Nature's Promise house brand of the Ahold/Giant/Stop & Shop chains has low sodium chicken broth. Pacific Naturals has low sodium versions of both vegetable broth and chicken broth.



Kitchen Basics has Unsalted Beef Stock (150 mg of sodium/serving) and Unsalted Chicken Stock (180 mg of sodium/serving). Note that both are slightly over the 140 mg. legal limit, but a lot less than other options. Kitchen Basics has a convenient store locator for their products that are sold in some mainstream stores.


More Than Gourmet offers a vegetable stock with no fat and 75 mg of sodium/serving.

Finally, Trader Joe's, mentioned above has a low sodium chicken broth in the house brand.

Hormel/Herb-Ox makes Beef Flavored Bouillon Sodium Free Granules, Chicken Flavored Bouillon Sodium Free Granules, Beef Flavored Sodium Free Bouillon Instant Packets, and Chicken Flavored Sodium Free Bouillon Instant Packets.


Wyler's makes sodium free beef and chicken bouillon.

Orrington Farms makes a low sodium beef flavored soup base and food seasoning with 1 g of fat and 60 mg of sodium and a similar chicken soup base with 1.5 g of fat and 140 mg of sodium. They are available through the Amazon ad on this site.




There are two brands of Swiss-made vegetable bouillon with low salt levels. Both use palm oil as a first ingredient so they have higher fat levels than the previous choices - they both have 2 mg of fat and 130 mg of sodium/serving. Rapunzel Vegan Vegetable Bouillon is labeled "no salt added". (They have a locator for stores that carry it.) The second is Organic Gourmet Vegetable Bouillon which has somewhat less saturated fat than Rapunzel, 1 g vs. 1.5g . The website says they also make a low sodium vegetable concentrate for soup and stocks but I have yet to see it in a store. (Web-based sources.)

If you can not find the above products in your usual store, TELL THEM! When mainstream stores get a enough requests from the millions of people who need LS/LF diets they will change their practices.

The three web-based stores given in the blog header are a possible source of these products if you can not find them locally, although shipping soups can get expensive.

North Bay Trading Company is a good source of dried vegetables mixes that can be used to make soup by themselves or in conjunction with the broths given above.

(Note that some commercial dried soup mixes are low in salt, but others are quite high and may appear to have similar labels - so watch carefully. For example Manischewitz Soup Mix Vegetable has only 70 mg of sodium/serving while the nearly identical looking Manischewitz Soup Mix Minestrone has 700 mg of sodium/serving!!!)