Pillars of Salt

 I know it is a religious fable but in this modern, fast-food, preservative-laden world we live in millions of people in the western world have become – or are in dire danger of becoming – pillars of salt.

Sodium reigns supreme. It is everywhere on your supermarket shelves – and I am not just talking about packets of potato crisps that boast lashings of salt and vinegar. I am also not just talking about cured ham and bacon and corned beef. It is used as a preservative in just about everything in a packet or a can. Canned soups, instant packet soups, baked beans, sauces,  mustard, powdered spices. Even so-called “lite, low fat” cheeses and cartons of milk.

Last year after a serious illness – in which I lost eight kilos in one week – I was put on a low fat diet among other health improvement measures.

After several bouts in hospital I was sat down by a dietician who told me about the dangers of my continuing on a high sodium diet. I naively told her that I didn’t eat much salt. Wouldn’t have it in the pantry cupboard if it weren’t for house guests. I was thinking about my father’s lifelong habit of smothering his dinner with salt. It was a ritual as soon as his plate reached the table and before he even tasted the food. Out would come the salt shaker and salt would be sprinkled all over it. Meat, vegetables, the lot.

The dietician asked me if I ate much packaged food and suggested I wear my reading glasses to the supermarket for my next shelf-stocking spree. An experience at home sort of braced me for what to expect. My new bride, whom I call Mrs. Nosebag, has been a vegetarian for about twenty years (although she does eat seafood) and knows her ingredients.

She went into the kitchen and the pantry and started reading labels and throwing out anything that was high in sodium. Actually we didn’t throw it away, we gave it to a soup kitchen for the homeless in St. Kilda.

By the time she had finished I felt a bit like Mother Hubbard. My cupboard was bare. I’ll admit I pined when she cleared out the Worcestershire sauce and the soy sauce and the jars of mustard and the cartons of chicken stock and fish stock I used as a marinade. Soup cubes were ditched immediately. As was my favourite salad dressing. I mean, with Paul Newman’s name on it how could it be bad for you? It can.

I did wear my glasses to the supermarket and was shocked. Even low fat milk was high in sodium. And so were some famous brands of expensive up-market bread. The one ‘no-no’ that got me was a small, favourite can of tuna. I was ready to give up the cans swimming in olive oil but even ‘tuna in spring water’ had more than 100mgs of sodium. One expensive  high protein meal replacement powder had 150mg per glass.

But you learn to cope and experiment and it aint that hard. I like an occasional crispy-crust pizza. Now I make my own with my own low-salt toppings on slices of wafer-thin pita bread.

Salad dressing? Some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, black pepper and a hint of low-salt seeded mustard.  Mexican salsa?  It has more than 450mg for every 100 grams. So I make my own with chunks of various coloured capsicums, onion, hot chilli peppers. No salt.

Luckily I am allowed to eat lean meat. Lots of it. To keep protein levels up. Thanks to the trusty George Foreman grill and the roaster I can grill or roast lamb cutlets, small steaks, chicken legs, fish (but not the crumbed high-sodium frozen fish fillets from the supermarket).

You can baste a lamb shank in olive oil and sprinkle it with rosemary. Bake it and it’s like a Sunday roast.

I can stir-fry cubes of lean chicken breasts with roasted unsalted cashews and frozen stir-fry vegetables with ginger and garlic. I love ears of corn on the cob bought in the supermarket and then frozen. There is always a bowl of raw radishes chilling in water in the fridge served in a salad dressing with sweet, cherry tomatoes.

Dining out I lean towards fish and pasta –especially risotto and spaghettini with clams and mussels and calamari in olive oil with a touch of chilli. Garlic prawns in the shell and scallops cooked through on the half shell.

For breakfast I have fruit – stone fruit like nectarines and apricots and plums when in season. Watermelon, apples, and heaps of red grapes. I started out having a bowl of toasted muesli with dried fruit, nuts, and skim milk until I found out how much sugar there was in dried fruit.  When Hurricane Larry sent the price of bananas through the roof there were delicious pineapples at five bucks a pop. Enough slices in one for three breakfasts. Put them in a dark cupboard until a sweet, pungent, smell tells you they are ready to eat.

And cut down drastically on your alcohol intake. That has nothing to do with salt. It’s just good to give your body a couple of alcohol-free days a week.

I’m not claiming I didn’t miss things to start with. A crumbed veal schnitzel or a chicken drumstick in breadcrumbs or crumbed prawns.  Not  any more. They’re real no-no territory. Read the box. Those crumbs have 459mgs of sodium per serving. Having read this far, you can hardly say the Hungry Hinch is on a Spartan diet. In fact I am eating more food daily than in the so-called good old days.

And I relished a couple of glasses of a good, big, shiraz for dinner on a Saturday night until giving away alcohol completely almost a year ago.

February 20, 2007