Thursday, July 17, 2008

Low Sodium School Lunch Ideas

Here are my first 5 school lunch ideas for under 400mg sodium (check the labels please and make sure of your brands sodium count). Not all are healthy per say but definitely kid friendly. People with kidney disease are on all different types of restriction so please make sure this fits with your doctor's orders.

Grilled REAL cheddar cheese sandwich (not processed stuff but 1oz slices REAL cheddar) grilled in unsalted butter, grapes, chocolate soy milk

1/2 large bagel with low fat cream cheese and 1 slice chopped cooked bacon (turkey or low sodium), orange slices, chocolate soy milk

English muffin pizza (made with no salt tomato sauce & pizza seasoning) topped with 1oz shredded mozzarella cheese, served with spinach and green leaf salad including chopped hard boiled egg, and water (my kids won't eat cooked spinach but they love the spinach leaves). My son loves an olive oil/vinegar blend dressing (we send it in a small container on the side so he can pour on at lunch time)

Black bean & brown rice burrito (cook up a batch of dry black beans, save some for other dishes.) Cody likes black beans, add the brown rice and cumin, garlic powder and 2 Tbsp salsa - heat on stove. We add a little water to "hold" the ingredients together. Serve with carrot sticks and homemade hummus

PB & J sandwich, applesauce, 2 chocolate chip cookies (check the labels and make sure you get the smaller, lower sodium ones)


When school starts, I will be sure to post pictures of what I send with him that week along with measurements. Send lots of fresh fruits and veggies as fillers - this prednisone makes him HUNGRY!!!!

Have a good day everyone! :)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

What Cody ate Today

Breakfast: Banana/Flax/Walnut/Peanut Butter Oatmeal
Well - just visit this link for the recipe and you'll
get the idea! I just found the site KERF (Kath Eats
Real Food) recently and love it! Will be going back
for more whole food type recipes.

http://www.katheats.com/?page_id=2032

Total sodium = about 100mg

Cody's thoughts - he loved it but wanted a little more brown sugar (most of what you see in the pic is ground flax seed - he only started with a Tbsp of brown sugar and we went up to 2 Tbsps)





Lunch: One of Cody's faves - we just did it one day and it stuck. We call it No Sodium Spaghetti - that's just how he differentiates between that and regular. It's basically noodles (which he chops up with scissors for some reason which is why it looks like rice kinda) with olive oil, italian seasoning, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. With it he had a spinach salad and 2 tsp light ranch dressing.

Total Sodium = about 131 calories for the 2 tsp of light ranch
He loves this dish because on Prednisone the appetite seems to increase ( a lot!!!) and he can eat as much of this as he wants (without dressing). We keeped cooked noodles in the fridge for him to warm up in the microwave.





Dinner: Pork Chop (4oz center cut = 290mg sodium)
Homemade mashed potatoes with unsalted butter
and pepper (0mg sodium)
Extra Fine Frozen Green Beans (3mg sodium)

We used Mrs. Dash original seasoning blend on the
pork chops and Cody loved it!

Total Sodium = about 293mg sodium.

For snacks today Cody ate an apple and 1oz of real cheddar cheese (179mg sodium)



Today's total sodium = 524mg.

Yes he is allowed to eat 1200mg per day but we are just trying to eat healthier, whole foods. Today's low day may mean he gets to eat something higher tomorrow (normally it's mexican or italian for him).



Right now I am working on school friendly lunches to pack so he doesn't feel so different from the other kids but last year when I was packing lunches for my boys and we were focusing on healthier - not low sodium - he never wanted to trade because his friends wanted some of HIS lunch

Thanks for coming!!

Stacy & Cody


.

Low Sodium Diet

Sorry it's been so long since our last post. Later tonight we will be posting what Cody ate today for an example of a low sodium diet that is under 1200mg sodium. We will be including pictures and Cody's thoughts on the dishes.

Thanks for everyone's support and to those who keep coming back for updates.

Stacy