In the last post we talked about replacing your usual snacks with nuts. It is an easy way to start a high potassium diet and improve your potassium sodium ratio. But there are many ways to start the high potassium foods diet. Another good way is to replace your present breakfast with a high potassium foods breakfast.
Replace Poor Ratio Breakfast Items
Many breakfasts consist of foods with a poor potassium sodium ratio. Sausages, bacon, or other processed meats, ready-to-eat cereals, baked goods such as biscuits, muffins or toast, pancakes and waffles, and cheese omelettes all have a poor ratio.
These breakfasts can be easily replaced with a high potassium foods breakfast. First, decide what items in your breakfast have the most sodium and the least potassium. Then replace these foods with high potassium foods. For instance, the breakfast items that we mentioned above have a very poor ratio. Replacing these with high potassium foods will improve your ratio for the entire day.
Better Breakfast Meats
As an example, replacing cured ham with uncured ham or grilled poultry will provide a breakfast meat with a better ratio. If you can't do without sausage, make your own. Commercial sausages have a horrible ratio. But if you use the Mayo Clinic sausage patty recipe you will improve your ratio. It has a recipe here for 12 breakfast patties with only 26 mg of sodium per patty. By the way, it even has advice on making the patties mild or spicy.
Better Breakfast Cereals
There are a few ready-to-eat cereals that have a high ratio. But most are extremely poor. Replacing the ready-to-eat cereal with a high ratio cereal, or a hot cereal consisting of rolled oats (old-fashioned oats), is a good way to start. Rolled oats have a very high ratio. And they provide a lot of potassium in a cup. Even better, add fruit, nuts, or cinnamon for an even higher ratio. Find other cereals with a high ratio here (for ready to eat) and here (for hot).
Fruit Is A Good Way To Start
Another way to start is to make a fruit smoothie. Almost any combination of fruit will provide a high ratio breakfast. Control the thickness of the smoothie by adjusting how much nonfat milk or yogurt (watch out for added sugar) you add. Or use orange juice or orange juice concentrate. Either of these will increase the ratio even more than dairy. Find tables of high ratio fruit and fruit juice here and here.
Of course, you don't need to make fruit into a smoothie. It tastes great in its natural state. Fruit can be eaten raw as an individual fruit, or cut up and mixed with other fruit. Especially popular is mixing honey dew melon, cantaloupe, mango, papaya, and pineapple in various combinations.
Skip The Usual Baked Goods
It is important to skip or limit the baked goods such as biscuits, muffins, toast, pancakes, waffles or croissants. These all have very poor ratios in the most common versions. There are “no sodium” alternatives for some of them. But some that call themselves “no salt” or “low sodium” still have more sodium than potassium. Check the label for sodium amount. Replacing the usual butter or jelly condiment with a high potassium alternative is a good way to increase the ratio. For example, alternatives that increase the ratio are almond butter, molasses, or some types of marmalade.
High Potassium Omelette
Eggs by themselves have an intermediate ratio. But they can be combined with high ratio foods to provide a high ratio breakfast. Adding cheese to make an omelette makes it a very poor ratio breakfast. Almost all cheeses have a poor potassium sodium ratio. However, adding vegetables and herbs, such as red or green pepper, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, tomatoes and spices can make an egg omelette a high ratio food.
In summary, getting a high potassium foods breakfast each day is a great way to begin the switchover to a diet of high potassium foods. To find tables that will give you the potassium content of food, so you can choose what to eat for breakfast, can be found by clicking the “Links To Food Potassium Tables” tab at the top of the page.
