Does Diet Make A Difference In Managing High Blood Pressure For African-Americans

Many people of all races resist the idea of modifying their diets to control a disease like high blood pressure that has few obvious symptoms. African-Americans are no exception to this rule. A study conducted by two scientists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte found that among African-Americans told they have high blood pressure:

• 75 percent were willing and able to give up or greatly reduce drinking alcohol.

• 67 percent were willing and able to give up smoking (in North Carolina, this is a huge commitment).

• 33 percent were willing and able to change their diets, and

• 22 percent were willing and able to reduce their consumption of salt.

There's more resistance to changing eating habits that there is to any other aspect of high blood pressure control. The relatively few African-Americans in this study who were willing to make dietary changes tend to be women who lived alone and had a care coordinator with their health insurance plans. Men and people who don't have insurance tended to be less likely to change the way they eat. And the reality is, if you have a lot of hardships in your life, you usually don't want to give up food, too. Changes in diet have to be subtle. Here's one way to do it.

Eat as you normally eat, but:

• Eat fresh foods rather than canned foods. It's better to eat greens you grow in the yard than greens you get in a can.
• Cook foods that are naturally tasty. It's better to rely on the taste in the food than the taste you put on the food.
• Don't leave out salt entirely, but use many other herbs and spices to add flavor.
• Don't leave out grease entirely, but don't let your food float in it. And, most importantly
• Eat good food often, so you don't feel a need to stuff yourself when you eat well.

Does this approach really work?

There's good evidence that it does. In 2003, the British National Health Service realized that persuading Britons to consume less salt could save lives, prevent disease, and save the health system a tremendous amount of money. The National Health Service, however, didn't just lecture people on how they needed to eat differently. They worked with bakeries and canneries and restaurants to encourage them to develop food that tasted good with less salt.

READ Living With High Blood Pressure

Their plan worked. By 2011, average daily consumption of salt per person in the UK was down to 9.5 grams, which is still a lot of salt. However, this was a 15 percent reduction in sodium from eight years earlier. There was a 40 percent drop in heart disease and a 42 percent drop in fatal strokes. All of this came from simply cooking food that tastes good despite containing less salt. African-Americans may not achieve total health by tweaking family recipes, but it's not necessary to give up on flavor to promote health.