By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD

A friend recently confided that she was trying to reduce her sodium intake because her blood pressure is elevated and she’s trying, with her doctor’s approval, to see if she can lower it through diet.  As we talked, I realized, that, despite being open to the idea of reducing sodium, she wasn’t sure what changes to make.  She’s already on the right track – she doesn’t use many processed foods and she eats a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and she enjoys cooking. Here are some ideas I shared with her.

1. Read the Nutrition Facts section of the label. Different companies have products that vary in sodium content. Even if the label doesn’t say “low sodium,” you may find a product that is lower in sodium than its competitors. For example, looking at a supermarket shelf of canned beans, I found a range of 90-450 milligrams of sodium per ½ cup serving. Choose the lowest sodium product and you’ve saved as much as 360 milligrams of sodium.

2. Drain and rinse canned beans.  You may have noticed that many recipes in Vegan Journal call for canned beans, drained and rinsed. The reason we suggest this is that up to 40% of the sodium in a canned product can be rinsed away. So, if you choose a can of beans with a label value of 200 milligrams of sodium, you can reduce the sodium by as much as 80 milligrams by draining and rinsing the beans.

3. Add no salt added tomato sauce to jarred pasta sauce.  Jarred vegan pasta sauce can be a convenience whether you’re using it to top a pizza crust, in vegan lasagna, or tossed with pasta.  You can reduce its sodium content by mixing it with purchased no salt added tomato sauce in the ratio of your choice – 1 cup tomato sauce to 1 cup pasta sauce, 2 cups tomato sauce to 1 cup pasta sauce, etc. Add a little oregano and basil, if you like. If you decide to use the 1:1 ratio of pasta sauce to tomato sauce, you’ve reduced the sodium in a ½ cup serving of pasta sauce from, say, 470 milligrams to 255 milligrams. 

4. Mix salty snacks with unsalted snacks.  If you like to snack on salted nuts or salted pretzels, buy a bag of unsalted nuts or unsalted pretzels and make your own reduced sodium mix. You can adjust the ratio of salted product to unsalted product and as you get used to eating food with less salt, you may find that you’re using much more of the unsalted product and less of the salted one. If you start with a 1:1 ratio, you might save 75 milligrams of sodium in a ¼ cup serving of nuts or as much as 250 milligrams of sodium in a 1 ounce serving of pretzels.

5. Toss the flavoring packet.  Products like ramen noodles are convenient but they are super salty. Much of their salt comes from the flavoring packet. You can discard it and flavor the noodles with a low sodium spice blend. If that’s not an option, start by using just a small bit of the seasoning packet and taste before adding more. If you’re eating a package of ramen noodles, you could reduce their sodium from 730 milligrams to 25 milligrams just by discarding the unopened flavoring packet.

6. Make your own condiments. Salad dressings, barbecue sauce, salsa, even catsup can be sources of lots of sodium. While you may not want to make all of these products, choosing a couple that you use frequently and finding recipes for them where you control the added salt (and use reduced sodium ingredients where possible) can cut sodium markedly. For instance, a commercial barbecue sauce might have 300-400 milligrams of sodium per 2 Tablespoons. Making your own with tomato paste could give you a product with 20 milligrams of sodium per 2 Tablespoons. There are some commercial reduced sodium barbecue sauces, but I could only find one kind in area stores.

7. Find or make a low-sodium vegetable broth. Many vegan recipes call for vegetable broth.  Aseptically packaged vegan broths could have 600 milligrams or more of sodium per cup.  Vegan broth base or bouillon could result in broth with as much as 800 milligrams of sodium per cup of broth.  You could make your own broth using fresh vegetables and adding little or no salt, use a commercial low-sodium vegan broth, or you could replace the broth called for in a recipe with 1 part of regular commercial broth and 1 part of water (or even more water and less broth). If you’re working with a well-seasoned recipe, it’s likely that you won’t even notice that you didn’t use as much broth as was called for. Replacing a cup of commercial vegan broth with a cup of low-sodium vegan broth could save as much as 680 milligrams of sodium.

8. Flavor food creatively. Salt is often added to commercial products as an inexpensive way to flavor food instead of using more expensive herbs and spices for flavor. If you do your own cooking, you can change that. Experiment with herbs, spices, vinegars, fruit juices, and other ingredients to enable you to cut the salt without sacrificing flavor.

9. When using a recipe, don’t feel bound to use the amount of salt called for. I’ve found that in many recipes I can use half or even less of the salt in the recipe without noticing it. You can always add salt but it’s hard to take it out once it’s been added to a dish. Many of our recipes in Vegan Journal call for salt to taste, encouraging the person preparing the recipe to use their own judgement rather than relying on someone else’s idea of how salty a dish needs to be. If you don’t add a lot of salt to a recipe, people can add the amount of salt that they like at the table.

10. Be aware of salty ingredients like miso, soy sauce, tamari, and liquid aminos. If the recipe has these ingredients, it probably doesn’t need additional salt added. And, just as you might do with table salt, taste the dish before adding salty ingredients – it’s likely that you won’t need as much as the recipe calls for.