High blood pressure: Surprising sauces, condiments and flavourings increasing your reading

Phillip Schofield gets blood pressure checked in Istanbul in 1991

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High blood pressure is also known as hypertension and is a major component in the risk of heart attacks or strokes. Millions of people around the world suffer with the condition with most being none the wiser as to the hidden dangers lurking in some of your favourite condiments, sauces or flavourings and how it can increase the risk of hypertension.

Condiments are a great and easy way to add extra flavour, texture, and nutrients to your meals.

Yet, many store-bought condiments can be high in calories, sugar, salt, and other additives.

Healthy condiments are low in added sugar and pack nutritious ingredients like protein, healthy fats, and fibre.

Hot sauce

Adding a little kick of hot sauce could add a big bang of sodium to your favourite dish warns experts.

Hot sauces can contain upwards of 200 mg of sodium per teaspoon.

The American Heart Association recommends staying within 1,500 mg of sodium daily.

Lori Williams, a registered dietitian at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center recommends using red pepper flakes or fresh hot peppers, like jalapenos to get the heat you desire in a healthier way.

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Parmesan cheese

When Parmesan cheese is used it’s rarely used sparingly, and because of that it easily adds a lot of unwanted calories, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium to one’s diet.

Parmesan cheese is high in salt with 1.7g per 100g.

It is also high in fat and should be avoided if concerned about your blood pressure reading.

Better options include feta or mozzarella.

Soy sauce

Soy sauce is high in sodium which is an essential nutrient that your body requires to function properly.

For one tablespoon of soy sauce, it contains roughly 902 mg of sodium.

This makes it high in salt, providing 38 percent of the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI).

While soy sauce has a relatively high amount of protein and carbohydrates by volume, it’s not a significant source of those nutrients.

 In addition, the fermentation, ageing and pasteurisation processes result in a highly complex mix of more than 300 substances that contribute to the aroma, flavour and colour of soy sauce.

Blood Pressure UK states eating too much salt is the biggest cause of high blood pressure and an adult should eat no more than 6g of salt a day.

Most of the salt we eat every day is hidden’ which means it’s already in processed foods like bread, biscuits and breakfast cereals, and prepared ready meals or takeaways, and frozen pizzas are another surprising food people with high blood pressure should avoid.

According to the charity, this hidden salt accounts for around 75 percent of the salt we eat – only 25 percent comes from the salt we add while cooking or at the table.

Nutritionists at Healthline say, as a rule, tomato products are problematic for people with hypertension.

The site states: “Canned tomato sauces, pasta sauces, and tomato juices are all high in sodium. A 1/2 cup serving of classic marinara sauce can have more than 550mg of sodium. A cup of tomato juice comes in at 615mg.”
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