• Restrict pickles, pappads, tomato ketchup, namkeen, potato chips, wafers, chutneys, brine water and chili sauce to a minimum as they have lots of hidden salt in them.

• Choose fresh or frozen unprocessed food preparations over those that are canned, cured, smoked or processed. Limit intake of fast foods. The latter contain too much of salt for preservation and flavour.

• Prefer bakery products using yeasts over those prepared with baking soda as baking soda is a sodium salt.

• When eating out, ask for a salt free meal.

• Include high potassium foods like kathal, brinjal, karela, lauki, french beans, amla, tomato, plums, cherries, phalsa, apricots and peaches to control your blood pressure.

• Instead of adding too much salt for taste, you can flavor your meals with lemon, orange rind, coriander and amla.

• Garlic contains allicin, a substance which has antibacterial, antioxidant, lipid-lowering and anti-hypertension properties.

• Be careful when eating out. Most restaurant and fast food meals are loaded with sodium which causes water retention.

• Read the Nutrition Facts label to compare and find foods lower in sodium. Look out for foods with monosodium glutamate (better known as MSG), baking soda, baking powder, disodium phosphate, sodium alginate, sodium nitrate, or any other compound that has sodium or “Na” in its name are likely to give you excess sodium.

• Limit even low sodium version of soy sauce ( it contains 900 mg of Na per serving).

• Ready to eat meals and pre prepared meals though convenient to use, contain sodium bicarbonate, thus increasing the sodium content of the meal. So, these foods should not be eaten on regular basis.