5 Magical Tips for Renal-Friendly Cooking🪄

People suffering from CKD, a catchy short form of chronic kidney disease have numerous diet restrictions. They have to follow many cooking methods. It’s quite difficult to accept changes in daily cooking habits and seems confusing to those also who cooked for their loved ones facing CKD. Although, everyone if he/ she is suffering from disease or not, has to maintain a proper lifestyle. The first step towards a healthy lifestyle is to establish a dietary goal that differs from person to person based on age, gender, religion, physiology & financial condition. Here are some dietary goals :

• Maintaining ideal body weight for optimal & positive health.
• Following a diet plan including all vital nutrients to maintain adequacy, to prevent nutrient loss & diet-related disorders.
• The elder people should maintain a proper diet to increase life expectancy. Now it comes to good dietary practices which include the right nutritional behavior & dietary choices, needed to achieve dietary goals. In this basis cooking of food should be done in the right manner.

Cooking TIPS– 1

Here are some renal-friendly cooking methods –

• Steaming is a cooking method involving moist heat produced by boiling water that helps to cook foods.
• Poaching is a method of simmering the food in a liquid or water until it cooks properly in heat between 160-175 °F.
• Stew is also a moist heat & slow cooking method. In this method, you cook meat or vegetables in liquid along with heat and serve them.
• Roasting on the other hand is a dry heat cooking method. In this process, foods are polished with oil or fat initially and then cooked evenly from all sides at least 300 °F.

Try to ignore processes like frying & deep frying because of its extra calorie load and as it increase the lipid profile in blood. So in this way people can avoid serious diseases like heart disease & kidney disease etc.

Cooking TIPS – 2

Application of spices

In the phases of CKD, patients go through taste alterations &
according to RDA all spices are rich in potassium which have
tendencies to increase blood potassium level. However, foods without spices is an unimaginable thought towards cooking. Here is some tips about spices people can apply happily –

• In renal-friendly cooking, people can use homemade ginger, garlic, green chilies, and their pastes, but they should avoid using powdered forms of these spices and other spices as well.
• In the case of dialysis, they can use Curd because they don’t have protein restrictions & tomato puree to bring the tanginess of foods.
• They can use a sprinkle of black pepper, giving a food a slide sharp pungent flavor.
• To increase the flavour they can use asafoetida (Hing) for Tadka.
• Almost all spicy foods are incomplete without Garam Masala. So people can also use garam masala as a fragrant spice blend with lots of layers of flavour.

Cooking TIPS – 3

Choice of oil –

• A combination of Mustard oil & refined oil (sunflower oil, safflower oil, rice bran oil) is the best choice for cooking. It contains both PUFA & MUFA including alfa linoleic acid. So the ratio between unsaturated fat & saturated fat should be maintained to achieve the ideal quality of fats which reduces bad cholesterol (LDL – low-density lipoprotein) & increases good cholesterol (High-density lipoprotein) in the blood. This oil can also be used alone in cooking. In CKD dyslipidemia is very common and therefore, increases the risk of plaque in arteries, hypertension, stroke and heart failure. Although, not only in chronic kidney disease but in other kidney diseases such as nephrotic syndrome, uncontrolled blood lipid levels are found since birth. Using oil in combination can prevent this problem easily.
• Another oil is very famous in the market that is olive oil. People are often confused & unable to choose for the right use, in the market two kinds of olive are available. 1. Cooking olive oil & 2. Extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin oil due to its low smoking point of about 350-410 °F, is not appropriate for cooking. On the other side olive oil holds a smoking point of about 390-470 °F which is a bit higher than extra virgin olive oil and are ideal for cooking. Extra virgin oil is a good choice of salad dressing.

Cooking TIPS – 4

• Does the cooking method reduce creatinine levels? It’s not actually a tip but a query.
• No, actually cooking methods don’t reduce the creatine level. It’s a myth, but proper cooking methods can prevent electrolyte imbalance in the body, and balance micro & macro nutrients proportionately which helps the body function properly.

Cooking TIPS – 5

• Your diet should be less than 1500-2000 milligrams of sodium each day. Be eat any stage of Kidney Disease, those suffering from it always have some sort of restriction towards salt consumption. But how would a foot taste even close to good without salt? We do not recommend the diet without salt but you can try the following methods to lower your salt consumption without omitting it.
• Divide the prescribed amount of salt for each half of your meal.
• Choose sprinkling salt over cook food before serving.
• Avoid cooking food with salt.
• You can also opt for adding salt to your tongue using a toothpick for each bite of your food.
• Add lemon to your meals, it in the salty flavour.

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Hope these 5 magical tips – opting for healthier cooking methods and managing electrolyte imbalance, choosing kidney-friendly ingredients, proper oil choices, and controlling sodium intake are beneficial for maintaining your kidney health and overall well-being. This blog may solve many of your queries leaving room for the exploration of many more. We will come up with more tips in our next blog till then stay tuned with us.

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