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Home cooking is one of the best ways to maintain a healthy diet and make sure your body gets all of the right nutrients. Oftentimes, people tend to order foods high in carbs, starches and fats when we go out to eat or order take-out, so cooking your own meals can help cut these unhealthy types of things out.
But there is one home cooking mistake you can be making that could actually cause more harm for your diet than good.
Seasonings are important when you’re cooking - they help ensure flavor, which we all know is essential. However, not all seasonings are created equally, and there is one that can add high levels of sodium into your food without you ever realizing it.
The culprit is bouillon cubes. Bouillon cubes are a great way to add a lot of flavor into just about anything - soups, sauces, stir fries… you name it. They come in a variety of types, like chicken, vegetable, beef or even fish, and are usually made with dehydrated vegetables, salts and other herbs to give your food a lot of flavor at once.
The downside to bouillon cubes are that they often have a lot more salt in them than you need. This helps give them their flavor, but it can also hurt your diet. Sodium contributes to increased blood pressure and excess fluid in the body.
The best way to cook with bouillon cubes is to find types that are low sodium or made without any added salt. This will allow you to control the amount of salt that gets into your food.