Low Potassium Diet - Top 10 Diets

Low Potassium Diet

The mineral potassium helps in maintaining normal blood pressure and proper contraction of the heart. This helps keep your heart, nervous system, digestive system, and muscles healthy. The best part is, potassium can easily be found in whole grains, vegetables, milk, fruits, peas, and dried beans. When potassium clearly has so many virtues and benefits for our bodies, why low potassium diet is recommended?

Unfortunately, for people with kidney issues, potassium's effects can be quite the opposite. An excessive amount of potassium in the body can accumulate up to dangerous levels within it. It can produce anything from heart attack, irregular heartbeats and confusion symptoms in the patient. If in case, these signs do appear it is advisable to switch to a low potassium diet at the earliest. Typically a diet which contains less then 2000 mg of potassium per day is termed a low potassium diet.

There are several low potassium foods that one can choose from. Some of the general foods which contain lesser amounts of potassium include bread, cake, coffee and cookies. In vegetables, you can choose from asparagus, beans, cabbage, green peas and fresh mushroom. In fruits you can choose between apple, blueberries, pineapples, plums and peaches.

Low potassium diets have certain guidelines which should ideally be followed for the best results. This includes cooking frozen fruits and vegetables in water and rinsing and draining well before serving; checking levels for words that include potassium such as potassium chloride; avoiding salt substitutes and limiting foods that are high in potassium.

There are several low potassium recipes available online and in cookbooks as well which can be referred to when cooking a low potassium meal. The appetizer meatball is one such recipe and goes as follows:

For the meatballs: 1lb ground turkey breast; 2tbsp extra spice seasoning blend, 2 egg whites, 1/3 cup unseasoned bread crumbs

For the sauce: 1 tbsp extra spicy seasoning blend, ½ cup grape jelly, ½ cup Dijon mustard, ½ cup barbecue sauce.

Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 f. Blend the ground turkey, extra spice seasoning, egg whites, and bread crumbs in a large bowl. Shape the mixture into 20 meatballs of 1 inch each. Then you can place the meatballs on a baking sheet sprayed with no stick cooking spray and heat in the oven for 20 minutes or till cooked.

For the sauce you should combine the extra spicy seasoning with grape jelly, Dijon mustard and barbecue sauce in a small but heavy saucepan. Heat the concoctions till the jelly melts and serve with the meatballs. The recipe serves 10 and takes 15 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to cook.

It is advisable to find out as much as you can about what are the signs and symptoms of a high potassium level, what effects it has on your body. If you notice that you are suffering from any of the symptoms then do switch to a low potassium diet as fast as possible. After all, you can't afford to take chances with your own health can you?