One of my most favorite things to eat, before being diagnosed with CKD, was fresh garden tomatoes. Tomato sandwiches were my favorite.
April is National Florida Tomato Month. But, what if you have CKD? Tomatoes are low in sodium, protein, fat, and calories. They are, however, high in potassium. One medium tomato has almost 300 mg of potassium. Tomatoes have 24mg of phosphorus per 100grams, so that is good too. One medium tomato also will provide fiber as well as multiple healthy minerals.
So, if you have CKD, like me, how can you still enjoy fresh garden tomatoes? Well for one thing substitute half of your recipe with roasted peppers instead of all tomatoes. There are two recipes, below, both from Davita. One is for a tomato sauce to use on pasta, or as a pizza sauce, etc, and the other is for a salsa. I will add how I would make them, to make them, even more, CKD friendly.
The lower potassium tomato sauce I would roast my own red peppers to decrease the sodium amount. If you can find low sodium roasted peppers they could be used as well. Plus a lot of pre-packaged items will be higher in phosphorus than making it yourself. I would also substitute garlic for red pepper flakes because I don’t want hot spicy. Note that a serving size is 1/4 of a cup so be careful how much you consume.
Salsa I would eliminate the jalapeno pepper because I don’t want spicy salsa. If you have GERD you might want to eliminate any of the spicy items in these recipes.
You can still enjoy some delicious fresh Florida tomatoes.
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