The Main Food I Restrict With Chronic Kidney Disease

I know being born with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and going through all stages while growing up how difficult it can be to know what to eat. When I was between stages 3-5, each new stage would bring along more restrictions and foods to avoid.

Keep in mind that I am very health orientated individual. I took a nutrition course, saw many nutritionists, did a lot of research, and tried alternative medicine/diets. Because of all the knowledge I had around food, I took recommendations about changing my diet very seriously as I could understand the impact of food on my body. I also genuinely believe food can heal.

I would try all these new things in hope that I would come across a magic diet to restore my kidney function. In my findings, I found a specific food group to be the worst kind for general health and especially kidney health - processed foods.

Processed foods

I classify processed foods as fast food joints, most packet foods (chips, crackers, cheese, biscuits, instant soups, cereal, bread). Basically any foods that are far away from how they would naturally look when they come out of the ground. Most of these foods, when going through their processing stages get pumped with crazy ingredients, lots of sugar and/or insane amounts of salt. All of which can be harmful to the kidneys.

Typically if there are a bunch of ingredients that you don't understand or see a bunch of numbers I will but it back because it is likely that a lot of chemicals have been used to make that food.

This type of food I have known majority of my life that I should be restricting or avoiding in total. But my rule of thumb, when it comes to diet is that I shouldn't try to avoid any food it still let myself have certain processed foods as a treat.

What I eat instead

This was initially was a hard adjustment and some weeks it still is, but instead of going for these packet options, I now buy fresh foods form farmers market. Don't get me wrong, this can be time consuming and there are still some packets foods I eat, but this has helped. Ghee is my main source of fat I use this in my oats and in my cooking as my oil. Oats are what I eat for breakfast most days instead of bread. But if I do eat bread it is sourdough from the local farmers market.

I try locally source the food where possible and fit alternatives with the least amount of ingredients. Less is more. Overall there is so much food out there, that can be confusing whether it's healthy or not especially for your preserving your kidney function. Restricting processed foods what a good start for me to feel like I was doing something to help the health of my kidney.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.