hey,
I am lookin into gettin some of the meat substitutes but everything I can find is so high in sodium... I have high blood pressure and really need to watch my sodium... so anyway, i guess wat i wanna kno is... is there any type of meat substitute that isn't so high in sodium???

thanks,
Paul

I've never really looked at the sodium content of my meat subsitutes before, but have you tried Boca? heres a link

http://www.bocaburger.com/index.aspx

Maybe you can email them or find nutritional info on the website.

boca vegan burgers have 470mg of sodium per patty
Morningstar Farms Vegan burgers have 280 mg per patty
Yves good burger has 470 mg per patty

Hello. What type of meat are you trying to replace and how? If it is in a recipe You can use commercial meat analogs or you can sub the meat for something like seiten, tofu, or TVP. If it's tacos or Mexican you can sub beans. If you are looking for a "burger" you can try an eggplant burger (http://maindish.allrecipes.com/az/ggplntBrgr.asp) or mushroom burger (http://barbeque.allrecipes.com/az/PortobelloMushroomBurgers.asp).

Hi Paul,

I also have high blood pressure, and I'm very careful about sodium and saturated fat. I've become quite the label whore.

How low sodium do you want your diet to be? And are you vegetarian or vegan? If you're a vegan, you shouldn't really have a problem with sodium at all as long as you choose fresh or bagged veggies over their canned counterparts. Even if you eat, say, one meat analog a day on a vegan diet with lots of fresh vegetables, you should only come in at about 30-40% of the recommended daily value of sodium. Is this too high for you? That's about what I aim for.

For (frozen) meat analogs, I know the chicken Morningstar patties (which are MARVELOUS), have about 20% of your DV of sodium. I couldn't tell you about beef analogs because I haven't found one that I like yet. I think they all taste like ribs.

The other thing is to make tofu patties on your own. Chunk tofu is often packaed in salt water but you can get it packaged in just water, read the labels. I'm pretty sure it's a common thing, you should be able to get it at any grocery store (kroger has an especially large selection of vegetarian and natural foods).

The tofu patties are easy, you just use that masher tool thingy with the slits (sorry, dont know what its called) and mash up the chunks into pattie crumbles, then shape them and season with whatever spices you want (table salt excluded of course). Virtually no sodium.

oooh.. a potato masher? or a pastry cutter thingy?...

there are plenty of recipes in the recipe section for homemade veggie burgers... when i'm home i like to make low-fat and low-sodium oat burgers that are seasoned with basil, oregano, garlic and onion... they're heavenly w/o being too heavy

foodnetwork.com has an awesome split pea burger recipe (just search for "split pea burger"). It's the best burger I've ever had, vegetarian or not. And you don't have to use any salt if you don't want to.

If a fake meat burger containes a lot of salt, I use less in the rest of the meal to compensate. I'm not sure if that would be enough for you though. I also noticed on holiday in Canada that the food there containes a LOT more salt then it does here (for the same type of food), I guess this would be the same in the USA. I also use unflavored salt-free tofu a lot, and add the seasonings myself. It's cheaper too, compared to the burgers and stuff.