{"id":6532,"date":"2017-07-14T08:30:08","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/?p=6532"},"modified":"2017-07-11T11:45:06","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T15:45:06","slug":"sodium-reduction-easy-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/think-before-you-eat\/sodium-reduction-easy-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"Sodium Reduction – Easy Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annette Gray, Leader Culinary Innovation and Research and Development Chef for Aramark.<\/em><\/p>\n

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For years, we at Aramark have been working on our commitment to health and wellness, with our team of 750 dietitians and our Healthy for Life\u00ae program in place. At the same time, the American Heart Association had been working on improving the cardiovascular health of all Americans and reducing deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke by 20 percent. In 2015, when we realized we shared common goals, we decided to team up and\u00a0Healthy for Life 20 by 20<\/a>\u00a0was born, our joint initiative to, by 2020, improve the health of all Americans by 20 percent.<\/p>\n

How exactly do we plan to achieve this ambitious goal over five years? In addition to consumer education, community health programs and other efforts, a significant portion of our initiative involves healthy menu innovation to reduce calories, saturated fat and sodium levels while increasing fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Because we\u2019re one of the largest food service providers in the U.S., these changes we\u2019re making in our kitchen stand to impact 10 billion meals by 2020.<\/p>\n

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  1. Sandwich bread swaps:<\/strong>\u00a0To start, we completely overhauled our sandwich program to include more whole grain options. Most people don\u2019t realize that sliced bread is a\u00a0sneaky source of salt<\/a>\u00a0and some whole grain brands are actually higher in sodium than white breads. Our Product Development team asked consumers while our chefs conducted robust recipe testing to find the best options that would not compromise taste or increase overall sodium levels. This enabled us to keep quality paramount and our consumers satisfied. So when you\u2019re shopping for bread, even whole grain types, check the\u00a0nutrition labels\u00a0<\/a>for sodium content.<\/li>\n
  2. Healthy condiments hacks:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re challenging the norm when it comes to everyday condiments, too. In some of our accounts, we\u2019re switching from mayonnaise to Greek yogurt. This helps cut down on sodium, saturated fat, and calories, and it gives a little protein boost without impacting overall flavor. Another healthy condiment we\u2019re incorporating is\u00a0hummus<\/a>. Most people probably think of this as a dip but this chickpea-based spread has a thick and creamy texture that has been well received on some of our vegetarian sandwich options and in some of our salad dressing recipes.<\/li>\n
  3. Staying in season:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ve made great strides in keeping our produce seasonal as a way to keep our customers excited and we\u2019re happy to say it\u2019s worked.\u00a0Fresh fruit and vegetables<\/a>\u00a0typically have more flavor when they\u2019re in season. Think of sweet corn and strawberries in the summer and delicious, juicy oranges in the winter. Filling up on fruits and vegetables naturally helps displace more processed foods which are typically higher in sodium.<\/li>\n
  4. Plant-forward bowls:<\/strong>\u00a0One of our greatest successes has been featuring\u00a0whole grain bowls<\/a>. Our bowl meals incorporate 50 percent whole grains, like farro, quinoa or brown rice and 50 percent vegetables, like Brussel sprouts, bell peppers, winter squash, mushrooms and more. Our grain bowls only have an average of 430 milligrams of sodium.<\/li>\n
  5. Small steps:<\/strong>\u00a0One of the biggest lessons we\u2019ve learned in enhancing with our menus is that you can\u2019t go from zero to 100. For example, instead of completely removing sodium from our soups right away, or moving all the way to low sodium varieties that many people don\u2019t enjoy, we make subtle changes by reducing the amount of sodium by 100 or 200 milligrams at a time \u2013 replacing sodium as we go with other flavorful ingredients like herbs and spices and even vegetables purees.https:\/\/sodiumbreakup.heart.org\/healthy_menu_innovation_that_can_help_everyone_be_healthy_for_life?utm_source=SRI&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=HFGweekly&utm_content=Aramark&utm_campaign=SodiumBreakup<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Annette Gray, Leader Culinary Innovation and Research and Development Chef for Aramark. For years, we at Aramark have been working on our commitment to health and wellness, with our team of 750 dietitians and our Healthy for Life\u00ae program in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9193321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[313095,15132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lighten-up-your-recipe","category-think-before-you-eat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9fc-1Hm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9193321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6532"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6537,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions\/6537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/healthyhorizons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}