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Get the Coumadin Cookbook!

Coumadin Book

This indispensable book includes:

• A primer on WHAT a Mediterranean-style diet is and WHY it's great for you
• 95+ delicious Coumadin safe recipes
• Information about managing your diet on Coumadin
• Ingredient and cooking tips throughout the book
• Complete Nutrition Facts, including Vitamin K content, for each recipe

Buy the paperback | Buy the eBook (PDF document)

Questions about ordering? Click here to read the FAQ.

How to order by mail: We are happy to accept personal checks drawn on a US bank for delivery within the United States only. Download the form to order by mail. We regret that we are unable to process orders by phone or ship printed books outside the United States.

Note: This is a revised and updated version of Dr. Harlan's The Dr. Gourmet Diet for Coumadin Users. These are the same recipes with updated Nutrition Information, with the addition of information on a Mediterranean-style diet.

How Much Vitamin K is in...?

Find out the exact amount of Vitamin K (in micrograms) of almost a thousand common foods! Listed both alphabetically and then in order of the amount of Vitamin K in the food, this list will help you know exactly how much Vitamin K you're eating. Just $4.95 for the eBook (PDF) or $12.95 for the paperback. Get your copy now!

It's easy to get answers about health and nutrition! Just send your question by email to [email protected] and Dr. Harlan will respond to selected questions of general interest. Answers will be posted in the Ask Dr. Gourmet newsletter (sign up now!) and archived in the Ask Dr. Gourmet section of the website.

Please note that the Ask Dr. Gourmet feature is restricted to questions regarding food and nutrition. Due to the many questions we receive, not all questions may be answered. For more specific questions about your individual health, please contact your doctor. About Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy


 
 

Ask Dr. Gourmet

Do you have resources for renal patients taking Coumadin?

My father is a renal/diabetic patient taking Coumadin. My mom has always followed his renal diet as well as a sodium restricted diet. She is very well informed on what is acceptable for the renal portion of his diet. He has recently been diagnosed as diabetic and has also started taking Coumadin. My mom has tried working with several dietitians to control his diet, but has not had any success.

She is so confused and desperately wants to learn more to help my father. She has packed my father's breakfast, lunch, and even dinner when he needs it for the past 13 years and only wants to give him the best foods possible to help him. He has lost so much weight because as it has been said, "Patients, it seemed, were usually told not what they could eat but, rather, what they could not eat".

Do you have any resources that you could recommend?

Dr. Gourmet Says...

The Dr. Gourmet website provides a number of resources for you to help your father eat healthy and watch the amounts of Vitamin K that he is consuming. For instance, there are three lists that you can download in PDF format. They range from a very simple list of foods that have a high or moderate amount of Vitamin K, to a complete listing of all ingredients used in Dr. Gourmet recipes with the amounts of Vitamin K listed. You can find those links here:

Basic list
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/warfarinbrief.pdf

List of foods with relative amounts of Vitamin K
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/relativewarfarinlist.pdf

Comprehensive list
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/warfarincomprehensive.pdf

The Dr. Gourmet Diet for Coumadin Users includes a six-week meal plan for two (with grocery lists) that keeps Vitamin K intake stable at about 80 micrograms per day (the Recommended Daily Allowance).

Also every recipe on the DrGourmet.com website has a section of Special Diet Information that can help determine if a recipe might be safe for those using Coumadin or have other health issues like Acid Reflux, Lactose Intolerance or need to be on a low-sodium diet.

While most recipes on the Dr. Gourmet website are pretty low in sodium, for those on very low-sodium diets every recipe has a listing in the Special Diet Information section to help determine if a recipe might be safe for his low-sodium diet.

Because Dr. Gourmet recipes use fresh ingredients that are low in sodium, often simply reducing the amount of salt that is called for by 1/2 or eliminating it altogether can help with eating less sodium.

Every teaspoon of salt has about 2,300 mg of sodium in it. As a rule of thumb, adding 1/4 teaspoon of salt will add about 575 mg of sodium to a recipe. Because the amount of sodium is reported for every Dr. Gourmet recipe, one can easily decide how much salt to leave out and still meet your father's targets set by his physician.

The Ask Dr. Gourmet section on the website has a listing of questions that have been asked by readers like yourself. The questions and answers are posted on this page: http://www.drgourmet.com/askdrgourmet/index.shtml

In addition, there is an easy way to find out about the nutrition content of any food. The USDA National Nutrient Database is at this link: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/index.html

By entering an ingredient and following the steps, this website will report the complete nutritional values of any ingredient and many prepared foods. The Vitamin K content is the last listing at the bottom of the Vitamins section. If it is not there, the food or ingredient that you searched on doesn't contain enough Vitamin K to be reported.

You can see that there's a host of information available to you on the Dr. Gourmet website for eating healthy while taking Coumadin.

Thanks for writing,

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS
Dr. Gourmet

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Is my husband's Coumadin dosage stable because he eats a big salad every day?
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Thanks for your lists of foods containing Vitamin K!
Can you eat green pickled tomatoes if you are on Coumadin (warfarin)?
Does eating garlic counteract eating high amounts of Vitamin K?
Will non-alcoholic beer affect your Coumadin dose?
Is Lean Cuisine Coumadin safe?
Does grapefruit really interact with medications? (See also....)
Are almonds a good snack for those on Coumadin?
Is regular tea, iced or hot, contraindicated while taking Coumadin?