DASH Diet

Start your engines, National Nutrition Month has begun! For this first week of National Nutrition Month I am experimenting with the DASH Diet. For those of you who are not familiar with DASH, please allow me to elaborate. The DASH Diet is not the latest celebrity diet craze promoted by three sisters in California who own a store by the same name, nor does it include a frantic run before (or after) each meal. DASH stands for "Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension." Hypertension is the medical term for High Blood Pressure. The DASH diet emphasizes the consumption of fruits, vegetables, and nonfat dairy; while still including lean meats, nuts, and grains as.

What DASH limits, however, is the amount of sodium. In the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it is recommended that Americans get no more than 2,300 mg of Sodium per day. The same applies to DASH, but the lower your sodium intake is the better. DASH also limits the amounts of sweets one consumes. One sweet is considered to be equal to 1 tablespoon of sugar or jelly, 1/2 cup of sorbet or gelatin, or 1 cup of lemonade. Please note these aren't small servings of cookies, cakes, and brownies, all of which can be high in saturated fat.

DASH promotes weight loss which is a treatment for obesity, a common risk factor for hypertension. The WELL study showed that participants with weight loss on the DASH Diet had a further decrease in blood pressure compared to participants with the same weight loss on low-calorie diets alone.

Now that you have the background on DASH, let me share my experience this week using DASH. I typically follow the Food Guide Pyramid when making my food choices through out the day. Comparing the Food Guide Pyramid and the DASH plan, they aren't totally different. In fact, I chose this diet to experiment with first because it isn't too far off of what I normally eat so I would be able to ease myself into this endeavor. According to DASH, my consumption of fruits is the only thing that is increased. My recommendations for grains, vegetables, and milk all remain the same. What does decrease though is my consumption of lean meat. Allow me to note here that it is recommended that I consume seeds, nuts, or legumes at least 4 times a week. I should also note that I am allowed 5 sweets or less a week. After my sugar binge that lasted from January through February, this may be rougher than I anticipated.

Day one of this experiment I was flying back from Vegas. I could have postponed trying DASH for one day, but the way I look it life doesn't pause when you're diagnosed with a chronic disease. So I threw caution into the wind and went with it.

Prior to my trip I had packed bananas and granola bars in my carry-on. I picked bananas because I view them to be a self-contained fruit. No need to wash them, they have their own wrapper, and they're not easily squish-able. That last part would prove to be a fatal mistake for the extra pants I packed just in case my luggage was lost. Now it was the morning I was to begin my challenge and the remaining banana was looking pretty beat up from being in my carry-on. I knew that fruit options would be limited so bit the bullet (or banana in this case). In actuality, the banana looked worse than it actually was. One serving of fruit done, three more to go.

At airport I had the task of finding food before the flight. I needed to have some sustenance with me seeing that our first flight would be too short to have more than beverage service and our layover before the next flight would be too short to pick up food. I first went to near by vendor and found a fruit and yogurt parfait and a mixed fruit cup. Both were $4.59 a piece and the parfait was a little high in sodium. I realized that being on a budget and on DASH was going to be a challenge. I walked down the way and spotted a kiosk with yogurt and fresh fruit. I was able to get a 6-ounce container of nonfat yogurt and an orange for $3.87. I had the yogurt at the airport and saved my orange for the plane to have with my granola bars.

Like I had anticipated, we just made our next flight after a run between terminals. Once I boarded I had my orange and granola bars. After that I was at the mercy of the airline as to what might be able to eat next. When the flight attendant came around, she had a box of snacks with questionable sodium contents. I nixed the peanut, pretzel, and cheese filled crackers right away. I decided to forgo the shortbread cookies (there was no way I was going to use up one of my sweets on those) for the pita chips. Surprisingly, they weren't too high on sodium, only 8% of my daily recommended needs. That could probably be attributed to the fact that the bag was the size of a wallet.

Judging by what I had consumed so far that day, it was safe to say that I would probably be getting dinner on the road. While on the plane I played with a restaurant app on my iPod to see the sodium content in foods. A hamburger from McDonalds has about 500 mg of sodium in it. Which isn't bad, but how many people have just one burger? Or pair that burger with fries? Most of the foods I found were high in sodium mainly due to processing.

After the plane landed, we were in the car on our way back home. Now home was an hour and half away and I was beginning to get really hungry. We decided to stop at Qdoba for dinner. I was unable to find nutrition information inside the restaurant so I was flying blind as to what to get for dinner.

From what I remembered seeing on my app, most food with meat tended to be saltier than the vegetable options. I ultimately decided on the grilled vegetable burrito. One reason was that it was described as being seasoned with garlic and herbs, also I had yet to get one vegetable in that day. I could have ordered a salad, but we were on the road and burritos are easier to handle. Without a second thought I opted for the black beans, corn salsa, cheese, and sour cream. I would calculate it out when I got home I thought as I tore into it.

I did just that. That one veggie burrito had over 1900 mg of sodium in it. That was 85% of my recommended daily sodium intake! After playing with their nutritional calculator I found that the major culprit for the sodium content was not what was inside the burrito, but what held it together. 700 mg of sodium came from the tortilla alone. I did feel little better when I calculated a chicken burrito that had all the add-ons I had on my burrito; a chicken burrito had 200 mg of sodium more.

Day 1 was not the greatest day I could have had on the DASH Diet. On Day 2 I went grocery shopping. First I had to make a list, but in order to know what I was going to need, I needed know to what I was going to make. I found that the Mayo Clinic had a great list of DASH Diet recipes. After I complied my list I headed off to the store and picked up what I needed. My bill was $20 more expensive than my typical bill. I did opt for a container of sorbet which added $4.50 and is not an item I typically buy. I figured that if I wanted something sweet I better have it on hand and people attempting DASH were likely to do the same. The extra $20 wasn't terrible, but spending an extra $20 could really have an impact on people's finances who are already on a budget.

As for how I have been eating since, days 2 and 3 weren't bad. In fact, they've been pretty good. I don't find myself starving through out the day or before bed. Sorbet has also been a good sugar fix when I'm looking for something sweet. The most difficult thing has been figuring out what to eat. I highly suggest sitting down and planning out a day worth of meals to ensure you're getting the calories and nutrients you need. Once you have your main meals figured out, it's pretty easy to fill in the gaps. The part to remember is that you don't need to be perfect, you just need to be close enough each day during the week that it all averages out.

Stay tuned to see what else National Nutrition Month has in store for the Naughty Nutritionist!