HOLIDAY FOOD TIPS

Hi there!

Its Serena, ReMend Nutrition Counselor with a few general food tips!

With the New Year upon us, there are a lot of diet resolutions out there. Here are some general tips to help you in your daily kidney journey.

High potassium and phosphorus foods to AVOID:

In general, things that have a lot of milk or other dairy, will most likely be high in phosphorus and potassium.  Foods high in potassium include: dried fruits, melon fruits, pumpkin, tropical fruits (papaya, avocado, banana, kiwi, etc.), beans, and potatoes.

Potatoes are high in potassium. If you absolutely must have mashed potatoes, I highly recommend you make your own so you can leech the potassium out of your potatoes. You can do this a couple of ways. I used to peel them, cut them into about 3 inch pieces, and soak them in a big bowl of water over night.  I would drain that water out the next day when I was ready to use them. I would then boil the potato chunks and dump that water too then boil again. It will really take away some of that potato flavor, but doing this removes a lot of the potassium. I would use about 5 Russet potatoes, a stick of butter, and a cup of heavy cream. I would also add about 2 tablespoons of Mrs. Dash garlic powder, and a tablespoon of pepper. Heavy whipping cream is actually lower in potassium (90 mg per cup) and phosphorus (74 mg per cup) because it has such a high fat content. I never added salt to food. If I was going to eat salt, I’d rather it be a food that I can’t take it out of since there was a daily limit on how much I could have.

Hopefully these tips have given you some insight on how to perhaps get back on track after the holidays as a dialysis patient. I’m an experienced former dialysis patient, so if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at info@SDReMend.org.

Happy New Year!

Serena