Tomatoes and A Kidney Diet

Podcast #67 Released on January 20, 2018
Eating tomatoes on a kidney diet can be a little controversial. It doesn’t have to be. I talk about why people choose to eat or not eat them.
A lot of people ask questions about tomatoes in renal diet. It is one of the first foods that doctors or nurses tell you not to eat and a lot of people want to eat tomatoes that they want to know what exactly is wrong with tomatoes.
Tomatoes and kidney disease. The big problem with tomatoes is potassium and potassium levels. Tomatoes are considered high potassium food. It just depends on which one that you are eating, how much potassium is in it. But the bottom line is this, if you don’t have a potassium restriction, that is not a concern. So, if your doctor has not told you to limit your potassium or control your potassium then there’s no reason to worry about potassium with tomatoes.
The other problems with tomatoes are the amount of sodium in them. So a regular tomato has 5 – 6 mg of sodium and that’s not the problem in your diet. You can eat fresh tomatoes and those are low sodium food but its when they can them or make them into sauces that you have to be careful if you’re watching the amount of sodium that you eat which you probably are if you have kidney disease then you want to buy the low-sodium version of canned tomatoes or you want to try to like if its whole tomatoes you want to rinse them off, pour out the juice, that type of thing. Limit the amount of sodium, read the back of the can, read the nutritional information. 
The other thing with tomatoes is potentially with dialysis. It might be a fluid restriction. Tomatoes have a lot of water in them and they can be considered additional fluid so you just want to be careful with that. But tomatoes in general, if you are in kidney disease diet, the main concerns are potassium and sodium. 
If you are eating a whole fresh tomato and you don’t have a potassium restriction, tomatoes are just fine. You can eat them because they are nice fresh fruit, they got fiber and they’re healthy so don’t worry about that. 
If your doctor has told you to watch your potassium, then you need to probably need to eat them less often or not at all. 
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