Ideas to offer menu customization while accommodating sodium-restricted diets

Customization is an on-trend dining expectation, including within healthcare settings and senior and assisted living facilities. Meeting patient and resident desires to customize their meals can be challenging when menus need to be designed around specific nutritional requirements, such as sodium restricted diets.

Offering patients and residents simple, better for you “base” menu items that can be customized, and tailoring the foods they can customize dishes with to their special diet needs can be one effective strategy for boosting menu satisfaction within dietary limits. Here are a few tips to strike the right balance—and a few ideas to help with inspiration.

Start with better-for-you “base” menu items dish components

Some of the most popular and easily customizable dishes are ones for which diners can pick and choose their own toppings, such as salads, grain-based bowls, pizzas and soups. By controlling the sodium in the base recipe, operators can give diners a little more freedom to customize their meals. Try some of these ideas to build a better base:

Offer quality, “sodium friendly” better-for-you toppings

In a similar vein, operators can also offer fresh, quality toppings that can help diners maintain their diets without requiring them to sacrifice great taste. Consider the ingredients below as customization options:

Proteins
Fresh, unbreaded, grilled chicken, seafood, pork and beef cooked with salt free herbs and spices are great options for proteins. Marinating without added salt can also boost flavor. Canned, rinsed and drained low-sodium beans and unsalted nuts and seeds are cost-effective, sodium-friendly plant-based options.

Fruits and vegetables
Expand customization possibilities by offering a variety of colorful vegetables—raw, blanched or grilled.  Cut fresh fruit is great for salads and as a flatbread topping, too—think flatbread with goat cheese and fresh pear or peach slices.

Grains
The same grains suggested for grain-based bowl base recipes—whole-grain pasta, brown and wild rice, whole-grain barley, farro, sorghum and quinoa—can be offered as custom add-ins for soups and salads.

The finishing touches

Finishing touches for dishes helps ensure diner satisfaction with the meal, and there are plenty of options to offer that add flavor without adding too much salt:

By offering lower-sodium “base” menu items, and tailoring add-ons to also fit lower-sodium dietary needs, operators can give consumers the choices they’re looking for without having to sacrifice their diets.