Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I wanted to go live and talk about the fun topic of how to stay kidney-friendly when you're dining out. If you join me please make a comment. Let me know your comments or questions and I'll be glad to answer them as I'm going along.
I wanted to talk about dining out because we're getting ready to get into the season where we have a lot of activities, we may have parties to go to, you may have dinners with people, you may be invited to and I want you to think a little bit ahead and plan ahead for those types of events. I know this time of the year I start going out to dinners more with people and I seem to need to be reminded of ways to do a little better. It can be a challenge, especially with kidney disease because you have the added need to follow some restrictions depending on your diet, depending on whether you need potassium phosphorus. All those types of restrictions.
I don't want it to be as much of a challenge. I know it's still going to be an individual basis to challenge, but I wanted to talk through some ideas that I have for ways to make it a little easier.
Number one: Foods tend to be saltier at restaurants. They add more salt or people when they bring dishes they use more salty products. They might use regular soy sauce they might use salted butter. They might add salt to foods just without thinking about it and you're probably a little sensitive to salt so you can taste it and know that “hey, this is a higher sodium food” but if you're in a restaurant you can ask them how the food is prepared so you might say “how is this food prepared? Is it pre-prepared or is it prepared locally in the restaurant?”
If it's made locally in the restaurant, they can use a little less sauce. They can not add salt to your meal while they're cooking and a lot of times they'll just do salt over the burgers or whatever just ask them not to add salt. You can ask them not to add salt to fries or side dishes. 
Sometimes the information is on the website so sometimes you can look ahead. I know Panera is great for this. You can go to Panera. You can look at the nutrition and you can also go in and tell it to remove certain ingredients. And then that way when you go into the store you know the nutrition value for the food that you're taking in, for the food that you're asking for. You can tell them you know “No. I don't want bread on the side. I want an Apple. I don't want this” that type of thing and you've already prepared it. You already kinda know what's going to be on that and so you're ready. So, the foods on the website you can also look for some salt terms like sauces may say that it's soy sauce or fish sauce or you just need to ask like how much salt is added and if like I said if they can prepare it or fix it in the store, improve it a little bit.
Number two is kind of a combo. Drink water. If you drink soda or like clear sodas or clear diet sodas then you want to drink water in between. Start out with water maybe drink some water before you go to help you feel more full. To help you stay hydrated especially knowing you're going to have more salt and choose smaller plates. 
I like to look at the appetizer dishes although they can be a little too salty. I mean it seems like they're mostly pre-prepared but appetizers, side dishes so you may want to start looking at like your meat as a side dish and sometimes even when you go out just eating side dishes instead of having the meat that may add to the protein that you don't need. Add those.
A lot of places also have lunch menus so they'll have like the lunch menu on the back and even if it's dinner time you can ask for those lunchtime portions, you can take part of it home so if the lunchtime portion if it's after hours a lot of times,