Healthy Heart Market Pickles - Dill and Bread & Butter

Healthy Heart Market NSA Pickles

The craving for pickles can get pretty strong. Unfortunately, salty canned or fermented pickles are not an option for those following a low sodium regimen. I’ve written about my pickle adventures in the past. My tale of searching for pickles is a perfect example of the highs and lows of low sodium living.

When we first started out on this loso adventure, I ordered NSA dills, sweet pickle relish, sweet red peppers, and even lower sodium sauerkraut from B & G. Then, they stopped making them. For a while Healthy Heart Market was offering dills, but then they discontinued the product. I played around with Vlasic Reduced Sodium and Rick’s Picks but was not impressed. I was ready to give up.Then I discovered Delicious Concepts. Their dills were good, and my husband especially enjoyed their NSA cornichons. But, they stopped producing the cornichons and eventually went out of business.

Meanwhile, Healthy Heart Market started producing NSA dill pickles again – regular dills and spicy hot dills. Recently, however, they’ve added Bread & Butter Pickle Chips to their offerings. My husband enjoys the regular dills. They come whole, so they can be cut per individual preferences. I usually leave them whole for my husband and serve as a side to a sandwich lunch. But they’re easy to slice lengthwise for long sandwich stackers or to quarter for spears. Cutting up dill pickle chips is a cinch as is chopping them for tartar sauce, tuna salad, etc.

Healthy Heart NSA Bread & Butter Pickle Chips

The Healthy Heart dills are very crisp, so the texture is quite appealing. They taste good too. However, they do not taste exactly like a full salt pickle. They taste different but still pretty good.

NSA Dill Pickle

The Bread & Butter chips are great! They’re crisp and slightly sweet. The lack of salt does not alter the classic bread & butter pickle flavor much at all. They’re my favorite. (You can tell by the half eaten jar pictured above!) I like them on the side, in sandwiches, and chopped into tuna or egg salad sandwich filling.

NSA Bread & Butter Pickle Chips

These pickles are part of a select group of products that my husband and I think are worth ordering and spending extra money on. They make a real difference in our lunchtime enjoyment. As a result, we order them by the case.

Rick’s Picks Pickle Adventures

When it comes to pickles, I keep looking for something that will spare me from canning my own. My husband has always been a dill pickle lover, so finding an acceptable pickle would add a special spark to his low sodium diet. I’ve made refrigerator pickles successfully, but they must be used up within a few months. The NCHFP (National Center for Home Food Preservation) has a recipe for low sodium sliced dill pickles. My husband likes whole pickles or spears, and I have not been able to find an approved recipe for low sodium spears or whole dills. And frankly, I’d rather not resort to canning, if possible.

I was disappointed when B&G stopped producing their no-salt-added dill pickles. At one time, I could purchase them from several online sources. Eventually Healthy Heart Market came out with its own brand of no-salt-added dill pickles. But, as so often happens when dealing with low sodium products, the company discontinued production. That’s what sent me on another search for lower sodium pickles.

As I reported in an earlier post, I gave the Vlasic 25% lower sodium pickle spears a try. The taste was good, but the sodium savings was meager. Plus I was disappointed in the deceptive serving size information.

Recently, Health Heart announced that it was offering a selection of pickles from Rick’s Picks. As fate would have it, I had already ordered two different pickle products directly from Rick's Picks. I received my jars of "Classic Sours” and “Kool Gherks” a couple of weeks ago. The first thing I did was check the “Classic Sours” nutritional label. A 1 oz serving has just 75 mg sodium, and there are about 15 servings per jar. The pickles looked like spears, so I assumed there were 15 spears in the jar and each spear accounted for 75 mg sodium. Not bad for low sodium pickles. However, when I opened the jar, I discovered that the pickle pieces were not uniformly cut. Several were huge and a few were super skinny. I weighed one of the large pieces; it was 3.5 ounces. I’d have to cut it into thirds in order to come close to the supposed serving size. So I ended up cutting most of the pickle pieces -- depending on the size, some into thirds and some into halves. The pickles taste fine, but, at this point, I'm not sure if it's worth ordering these particular pickles again.

The website information on the “Kool Gherks” is a bit misleading. It shows 70 mg sodium for 1 oz of pickles with about 12 servings in the jar. However, the jar label states that the 1 oz serving is actually 1/3 pickle. The pickles are whole, so I’d have to cut them up. However, it’s relatively easy to cut a whole pickle into fourths. I’d get some fairly uniform spears that are even lower in sodium that the nutritional label boasts. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I liked these particular pickles. They tasted strongly of the whole allspice used in the pickling spice mixture.

Last time I was at Whole Foods, I noticed it carried Rick’s Picks “The People's Pickle" slices. I might give those a try. The label has the same setup: 70 mg sodium for a 1 oz serving with approximately 12 servings per jar. There is no indication how many slices equal one ounce. So I know I'd have to weigh the pickle slices before serving them to my CHF husband. Also, I'm a bit leery of getting strange sizes of pickle slices again -- some super thick and others quite thin. It would be OK for use as a side condiment but not acceptable for sandwiches.

The bottom line: I’m stilling looking.

Vlasic Reduced Sodium Kosher Dill Pickles

A few months ago I noticed ads and coupons for Vlasic Reduced Sodium pickles. I was rather amazed that a big-name food manufacturer would actually jump on the low sodium bandwagon, so I started looking for the pickles in my local supermarkets. It took a while, but I was finally able to find them last week. I was hoping to find a replacement for the discontinued salt-free B&G and Healthy Heart Market dill pickles. My husband prefers having a whole pickle or spear on the side rather than slices in a sandwich. Vlasic covers both bases: it has lower sodium sandwich sized pickles called “Stackers” and also traditional dill pickles spears. I grabbed a couple of jars of the spears and brought them home to try.

THE GOOD NEWS:

Both my local Raley’s and Safeway stores carry the reduced sodium pickles, so there’s a good chance they are widely available.

As mentioned before, you have a choice of sliced sandwich pickles or spears.

They really are lower in sodium than the regular Vlasic offerings: The package claim is that both products are 25% lower in sodium than their full sodium counterparts. The regular “Stackers” and regular spears contain 210 mgs sodium per serving size, but the lower sodium versions are 150 mgs per serving size.

The pickles taste good, just as you’d expect a dill pickle to taste. The reduced sodium has no negative impact. (Of course that’s to be expected when it’s only reduced 25%.)The texture is good too, crispy and not mushy.

THE BAD NEWS:

Unfortunately, losing only 25% of sodium content isn’t very helpful for those who must faithfully monitor their sodium intake. It’s probably fine for those without serious health issues – those just trying to cut back a bit. But for anyone whose health depends on a lower sodium regimen, these pickles may not be a good option. Perhaps a “Stacker” on a sandwich every once in a while, but that’d be about it.

The nutritional label for the spears is particularly deceptive. I checked out the label at the store but not thoroughly enough. The spears have 150 mgs per serving – that part is true. What I didn’t notice until I got the jar home is that a serving size is 2/3 of a spear. Yes, you read that correctly: 2/3 of a spear! Who eats 2/3 of a pickle spear? And who logically assumes that a single spear is not equal to a single serving size? Does Vlasic really expect consumers to cut a third off each pickle spear? Or to calculate the correct number of milligrams before eating a spear?

The reality is that an entire spear contains 225 mgs sodium. So what? Well, anyone carefully monitoring their sodium intake might allow an occasional 150 mgs pickle treat every once in a while. But 225 mgs is another story altogether. That would probably require some careful thought and planning to adjust the rest of the day’s intake.

THE LESSON :

Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed to discover the true sodium content of the pickle spears and very displeased with the deceptive serving size information. This incident reaffirms the importance of vigilantly reading nutritional labels.

There are three important pieces of information to study carefully: the serving size, the number of servings per container, and the amount of sodium per serving. Be sure you understand what the manufacturer considers a serving and how many servings are supposedly in a package. Do NOT let the serving size information fool you. The 2/3 of a pickle spear serving is an example of a totally unrealistic serving size. A can of heat & eat soup may state that a serving size is 1/2 cup. That sounds fairly reasonable at first. You think to yourself, "One can of soup will serve two people." Later you realize that there were supposedly three servings per can and you inadvertently consumed more sodium than expected. Also, do NOT let the percentages fool you. They are based on a 2,400 mg per day diet. Most people on a low sodium diet must stay within a range of 1,500 mgs to 2,000 mgs per day. So the posted percentages are deceptive and may not be relevant to your situation at all.