When it comes to condiments, I use salt, pepper, BBQ sauce, ketchup, butter, cheese, and gravy.
I had a look at the list of condiments online & it had bread, mashed potatoes, bacon & lettuce listed as condiments which I also eat but I just want to focus on the ones I listed above since I don’t really understand how what I define as food (bacon etc) can be a condiment.
Anyway, I’m trying to improve my lifestyle & get some information so I’m just picking small aspects of my diet to focus on for each thread & get help with.
I’m trying to make small changes rather than huge ones, I’m not ‘all in’ with absolute nutrition & healthy eating - I just want to eliminate as much from my diet that’s unhealthy as I can without feeling like I’ve stripped everything I enjoy away.
With that in mind, I’m guessing salt & BBQ sauce are out of the window? I can deal with this if I’m honest so I’m assuming I may as well. I don’t miss salt when it’s not on my plate & I could deal with not having BBQ sauce so long as I can still keep ketchup for some meals.
I buy Asda smartprice ketchup because of how cheap it is. Since I’m not comfortable giving up ketchup as well, can somebody recommend a ‘limit’ that I can have it weekly without it affecting me too much. For instance I use sauce on a daily basis now, if I cut ketchup back to only three days out of a week is this still too bad or is it passable?
Is pepper bad for me? I get ground black pepper, again cheap ones from Asda. I tend to miss this from my meals more than salt, so I don’t really want to get rid of this if I can help it. Again, is pepper okay if I only used it for a few meals a week?
Same question for gravy. I absolutely love gravy & i think switching from using sauces to having gravy with more meals would
a) make the lack of sauce manageable &
b) allow me to put veg on for every meal
And yeah, pretty much the same questions for butter & cheese. I eat cheese that I grate daily, smartprice Asda again. And Butter I use fairly regularly - I either buy smartprice or Lurpak if it’s on offer. I’m guessing butter isn’t great but cheese in moderation is okay. If butter isn’t great, but I’m tidying up most of my bigger problems like processed sauce etc, is it okay to still be having my butter but just try to be conscious of it? If butter is absolutely worth cutting out - can I use an alternative for bread? I remember years ago I quit butter temporarily & used some mayo alternative that was ‘85 % low low fat mayo’ as I recall. My nan used it for her slimming world plan so I’m guessing it was okay.
Final question - based off of those condiments, what seasonings can I use to add to my food & give flavour that arent stupidly unhealthy? Or if I’m unaware of seasonings (which I am) and barely use any is it best to just keep going like that & don’t seek out more seasonings to be adding?
I’ve packed a lot into this but I’d appreciate the guidance. A lot of my questions are just ‘is X condiment’ okay.
Thanks in advance!
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Do you have high blood pressure or do you take blood pressure medication? If you have a blood pressure (high) issue, I would cut/not eat anything with too much salt in it. I’m on medication for blood pressure issues and I have cut a lot of my salt intake for all meals.
I stopped eating ketchup for certain meals and use yellow mustard instead. Mustard that’s yellow has no carbs. and is very low in sodium.😀👍🌈
I’m not sure about the HBP, I want to get it checked because of how my lifestyle has been - I’m expecting to be pre-diabetic. Doesn’t seem a priority to get checked out at the moment with lockdown 2 incoming. Basically I’m just looking to try & salvage my health back and treat myself like I DO have issues with blood pressure, since that means eating healthier anyway.
Not a fan of mustard except for on McDonalds haha. Are you saying then that ketchup is not worth having? Problem is I don’t want to cut it out and end up with completely dry meals.
Also any thoughts on gravy, cheese, butter & pepper if you have the time?
You can use ketchup, but not too much. Cheese is okay to be added to meals. Have you decided to substitute margarine for butter? Gravy is okay for some meals, but check the ingredients and the carbs. before you use it.😀👍🌈
I'm afraid what you're going to get here is a whole load of superstition, hearsay, and received wisdom that the nutritionists have foisted upon us over the last 50 years or so, and you'll end up more confused than ever!
It's a very unfortunate myth that only tasteless bland pap is good for us. This is not even close to being true. If we believed every "xyz is bad for you!" that ever appeared in the Sunday supplements, we'd all be trying to subsist on sunflower seeds and water.
Lettuce is a condiment? Wow. I eat salad veg by the plateful. I'm pretty certain that's not the same as eating a plateful of ketchup.
I would go with Michael Pollan's approach as a good first approximation: if your great-grandparents would not have recognised it as food, don't eat it.
Or, stated in reverse, if humanity has eaten it for a good few millennia, it's probably OK.
That means 80% of what's on the supermarket shelves is not food. Prepared sauces, including low-fat foods and food substitutes like margarine, are full of absolute rubbish that no human has ever eaten, ever (check the ingredients). Conversely, butter, cheese, vegetables, meat (including preserved meats) are food.
Salt is fine. Many Westerners are consuming too little salt, and the dangers associated with that are much more serious than too much salt. If you do happen to eat too much, your body will simply excrete what it doesn't need; however, its options for making up a shortage are very limited indeed.
Bread is fine as long as you're actually buying proper bread from a proper bakery, or perhaps from a farmers market. Very few artisanal bakeries even exist anymore. Most bread nowadays is not actually bread - it's an engineered product made without the traditional yeast-leavening process to look like bread. That includes almost all of the ones with fancy labels on them showing pictures of bucolic landscapes.
If you buy proper bread, you'll find it's so expensive you'll eat relatively little of it. Which is good.
As for sauces:
- Make your own mayonnaise, and sauces based upon it (eg., Ranch).
- Learn how to make pickles, chutneys, and sauces. Google online for Tracklements recipes.
- If you like spicy food, try making your own garlic chili sauce. You can put it on almost anything to add an extra flavour dimension.
Okay, so I can continue to use salt & pepper quite regularly? In which case, I’ll just try to use a bit less by putting it into my hand just using a pinch since at the moment I just free for all it. You said about the shortage of salt being a problem - but isn’t there salt put into most of the food we buy? In which case would I not already have enough salt via that even if I stopped using table salt?
I’m still going to use ketchup, because I’m too stubborn/ much of a picky eater to completely dry my meals out.
Are you also saying that gravy counts as one of the sauces you listed?
Sorry for the noob question - what is a preserved meat? How do I know if I’m buying actual meat as opposed to preserved?
No, I buy bread from supermarkets & I must admit I buy white even though I could easily stick to wholemeal. I don’t think I could completely cut out bread (yet), but I could buy smaller loaves of wholemeal or whatever the least-unhealthy supermarket-bread is and basically try to cut my weekly bread consumption in half. It’s at least a starting point.
>> You said about the shortage of salt being a problem - but isn’t there salt put into most of the food we buy? In which case would I not already have enough salt via that even if I stopped using table salt?
Indeed. So the solution to that is to use fewer prepackaged foods, not necessarily to cut out salt as a seasoning. Most of the salt that people consume in the West is from bread (particularly in the US, where the USDA advises people to eat an inordinate amount of bread). If you cut down on bread - which I strongly recommend you do, if you're in prediabetic territory - you will by definition cut down on salt.
Humans are actually very good at judging how much salt they need (as are all animals). Experimentally, it's been shown that people consume exactly what they need, if left to their own devices. Which is hardly surprising when you think about it.
>> I’m still going to use ketchup, because I’m too stubborn/ much of a picky eater to completely dry my meals out.
Don't see any problem with that as such, but I would investigate different sauces, or make your own ketchup (it's a lot of fun and tastes way better than the shop version). Cheap supermarket ketchup is mostly sugar, starch, and flavourings.
>>Are you also saying that gravy counts as one of the sauces you listed?
Gravy is fine.
what is a preserved meat? How do I know if I’m buying actual meat as opposed to preserved?
Sausages, bacon, and the like. Things that were preserved with salt and nitrites. The main problem with these is the usual one: the quality in supermarkets is atrocious, and they're often padded out with water/phosphates, breadcrumbs, soya, and who-knows-what. Again, your best bet here is to buy the expensive ones from artisanal suppliers. The cost will ensure you don't eat excessive amounts of them!
I don’t think I could completely cut out bread (yet), but I could buy smaller loaves of wholemeal or whatever the least-unhealthy supermarket-bread is and basically try to cut my weekly bread consumption in half. It’s at least a starting point.
The key is to replace the bread with other enjoyable foods, rather than thinking only in terms of cutting things out. If you are prediabetic, then you need to address this sharpish - particularly since COVID-19 adds another dimension of risk associated with metabolic disease. Putting it off for another day is quite literally a game of Russian roulette, albeit one with more than five empty chambers in the gun.
Fair enough, I’ve been wanting to go the way of less prepackaged food anyway.
I’ll look at some resources for making my own ketchup/ BBQ sauce, it does sound like it could be fun. Glad to know I can still get gravy though.
In fairness, I eat a lot of sausage. I can admit I should probably cut down. I’d find cutting down on bacon to once a week on a Sunday pretty easy, but sausages may be a little tougher to let go. I’ll try to limit them to no more than 2 meals a week and see how I do with that.
It’s quite scary how you’ve put it like that RE: the bread, and I’m sensing a theme. I do agree that while I love bread it’s probably not doing me favours, it’s adding carbs when I already have too many.
Still got a plethora of questions but thanks for what you’ve given me so far, I feel I’ve gained some knowledge & when I head to the supermarket today my basket’s going to look a little less unhealthy; which is something.
Sorry to butt in, just wondering if you have a link for this:
"Experimentally, it's been shown that people consume exactly what they need, if left to their own devices. Which is hardly surprising when you think about it."
I'm mostly curious for my own peace of mind when I find myself over-doing the olives!
I've been trying to find the references for this but can't find the precise one I was thinking of. There's a very technical discussion here that's worth reading:
You might want to skip to the "salt intake" section.
The central point is that sodium balance is under closed-loop control. Therefore there is a wide band of "correct" intake, and to speak of a single optimum value is meaningless. If you google "sodium appetite", you'll find a whole load of stuff on the subject. The general summary is that people are attracted to salty flavours in certain amounts but find larger concentrations unpleasant. Since humans eat only a certain volume of food each day, and there is an upper bound on the salt concentration that we find palatable, the total amount of salt is of necessity kept within certain bounds.
Worth mentioning that, among those Google hits, you will find a lot of authors contending that (Western) humans consistently eat more sodium than they need - where "what we need" is defined by physiologists waving their hands around.
This is not really surprising. Apart from the fact that (for superstitious reasons) Western medics believe all humans are eating too much salt, and therefore "what we need" is defined as a bare minimum, the nature of the sodium-homeostasis loop is such that excess sodium is a problem that's easy to deal with, whereas too little is not. The optimum setpoint for appetite is therefore higher than the theoretical minimum. It's true that our sodium appetite can be somewhat deranged by "hiding" salt in processed foods with artificial flavourings, but the problems associated with processed foods in general are broader than that trivial consideration.
You will get a variety of answers to this - and they will not all agree!
In my view, it is the BBQ sauce AND the ketchup that you need to be very careful with - they both contain a great deal of sugar, which is the most unhealthy ingredient you can eat (under all its various names!)
Pepper can do you no harm at all. You can also try herbs and spices for variety in your cooking.
You are right about the gravy - if it enables you to get rid of the sauces, and to eat more veg, then you are winning.
Instead of thinking about what to cut out, think more about what you need to add. Almost everybody has room to increase the vegetables and salads on their plates, and this is the best single change you can make. Cutting things out feels like depriving yourself! Add a huge pile of veggies, to every meal.
Yeah, I’m already really bad with my sugar. I drink energy drinks & fizzy pop everyday. I’ve struggled to stop this for years. It makes sense that these sauces are bad but honestly I’ve never really thought about it until recently.
Glad to know I was onto something with the gravy, I could definitely make do more with that rather than sauce.
Good point about adding - and I definitely need to add more veggies and salad to my diet, I eat barely any.
Gotta’ admit, I know I’ve only got myself to blame but I’m quite anxious that I’ve ruined my body past the point of repair already. I’ve eaten and drunk like crap for so many years. If I can cut out the sugary drinks, sauces, bread as much as possible and add tons of veggies to my diet I’m really hoping my body will be able to bounce back in time from the years of abuse.
If you are drinking sugary drinks then that is the very first thing to work on cutting out! Seeing your answer to The Awful Toad above - I suggest you don't worry at all about the bacon and sausages - work on everything with added sugar, and as we have said - mountains of veg.
It is never too late to improve what you eat and make yourself feel healthier. Now you have got it worked out, it is time to act!
All the best with it - keep coming back to tell us how you are doing.
We do need a basic amount of salt in our diets, but it depends on the type. Best to cut out table salt, but include sea salt/rock salt.
I use salt to flavour steamed veg or potatoes, I also use lemon juice, vinegar, guacamole, pesto, soy sauce etc for more natural flavouring.
I have sauce roughly once a week at the moment, with a treat meal on Saturday's though, so I'd say that's where my acceptable threshold sits in non-lockdown circumstances it'd be less, but our treat meal keeps me sane right now
According to my dictionary, the definition of condiment is - "seasoning for food, such as salt & pepper". I don't understand, therefore, how mashed potato, lettuce, bacon etc can ever be considered condiments. I can't help but feel that by focusing exclusively on condiments, you are focusing on a very minor, very trivial part of your diet. People with high blood pressure are told to avoid too much salt but apart from this, I cannot see how small amounts of ketchup etc can have any detrimental effect. What harm can a sprinkle of pepper possibly have? If you need to improve your diet surely you need to look at the food you are actually eating rather than the little extras? If your general diet is very poor, cutting out condiments will have minimal, if any effect. If you want to improve your diet, concentrate on eating natural, home cooked food with lots of fruit and vegetables. Avoid processed food as much as possible. This would be more helpful than worrying about condiments. Obviously I don't know if you have a specific reason for improving your diet - weight loss/diabetes/health problems? This will obviously have a bearing on what changes you need to make.
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Baked potato with cauliflower cheese 
How much salt is in your diet?
