Latest Dietitian's Blog Posts
Yes, You Can Bake! Baking Tips For A Healthy And Happy Holiday Season
By Dani Renouf, RD, MSc and Mikaela Kroeker, Student and Jennifer Snyder, Student The holiday season can often pose a challenge for many of us, given our health goals and needs. Many factors are at play, including difficulty controlling portions at a buffet dinner, lack of availability of healthy foods at parties, and a sense of feeling overwhelmed about how to make healthier substitutions to those beloved family recipes. The happy news is: yes, you can bake. By …
Tricks and Treats: Kidney-Friendly Eating During Halloween
By Dani Renouf, RD Halloween may only be one day of the year, but it seems that the celebrations and treats that come with this festivity often lurk in the pantry for months to come. Sometimes, clients tell me they have so much candy in the house that there is enough to last them past Christmas! For those who are on a kidney-friendly diet, commercial candy bars and treats are often a source of simple sugars …
What’s Good for the Kidneys is Good for the Budget: Tips for Kidney-Friendly Eating While Saving Time and Money
By Dani Renouf, RD We all feel the hit to the wallet at the grocery store when we line up to pay for our goodies. In fact, food prices have increased by about 30% over the past year, which raises barriers to the already-existing challenges of nutritious eating. As a dietitian, many of my clients mention that time saving is just as important as money saving and ask me for strategies to address both these challenges. …
More Meatless Mondays for Kidney Health
Author: Dani Renouf, RD, MSc Although beans, lentils, and other legumes may have received some mixed reviews over the years, specifically in relation to phosphorus and potassium content, there is no better time than the present to embrace vegetarian eating as part of a healthy diet. If you need to limit your potassium intake, check with your dietitian about how much legumes/lentils you can safely consume. Whether we study blood pressure, heart health, diabetes, or chronic kidney …
Less Salt, More Flavor: How to Pair Foods and Spices
By Dani Renouf, RD As a dietitian, the favorite part of my work is informing clients that they CAN have the foods they love, rather than focusing on what they need to restrict. This type of positive messaging is something I strive to do with each client visit I have. As the bulk of the nutrition education I offer involves strategies to lower sodium, I have started exploring ways in which to help clients enhance the …
Guest Blog post by Shirley (member of KidneyConnect.ca)
This is a guest post by Shirley MacNutt, Kidney Connect member, who kindly allowed us to share her post here. Disclaimer – This blog was not written by a healthcare professional but represents the experiences of an individual patient. There is no standard renal diet so if you have questions about your own diet check with your renal dietitian prior to making changes. I was diagnosed at age 22. I'm now 64. When my function got …
Planning for a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season!
The holidays are right around the corner and whether you've already started planning, shopping and wrapping or you leave it all to the end, we wanted to give you some strategies to manage your kidney diet over the holidays. Somehow holidays and celebrations always seem to centre around food and holiday meals are an important time of sharing with family and friends. So when it comes to getting through the holidays without any medical problems, the key is …
Kidney Friendly Cooking for people with chronic kidney disease: a NEW COOKBOOK!
This is a guest blog by Leah Butcher, dietetic summer student at Kidney Foundation of Canada At the Kidney Foundation, we get numerous calls about which renal friendly cookbooks we would recommend. If you only need to reduce sodium there are MANY cookbooks out there. But if you need to limit sodium, potassium, AND phosphorus, the number of cookbooks on Amazon is limited and many are at least a decade old. There’s a lot of work that …
Modifying Chinese Food to Fit a Renal Diet
This is a guest blog by Leah Butcher, dietetic summer student at Kidney Foundation of Canada We know that there are benefits to following a renal diet if you have kidney disease. For instance, reducing sodium (salt) intake can help lower blood pressure, decrease the sense of thirst and reduce the risk of edema (swelling) in the arms, legs and face. However not everyone who has kidney disease finds it easy to stick to their diet restrictions. …
Spotlight on phosphorus: the nutrition facts table’s missing mineral
This is a guest blog by Emily Robins, Dietetic Intern, Grand River Hospital – Kitchener, ON Over the past four weeks I have had the opportunity to intern under the supervision of June Martin, Registered Dietitian for the Grand River Regional Renal Program. I have spent most of my time here working with patients in the hemodialysis unit, assessing their nutritional status and providing nutrition intervention and counselling as needed. As a student I learned that one …