Foods Good for Your Kidneys - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. The five foods that you want to avoid to prevent kidney disease are really important because kidney disease is really prominent in the US and more and more people are being diagnosed with kidney disease. The two major causes are: diabetes is the number one cause of kidney disease, and then high blood pressure, hypertension. So, for the high blood sugar, you want to make sure that you control it. If you are a diabetic, you have to get that under control. If you are genetically dispositioned for it, or you are pre-diabetic, you really want to get on top of it and stay ahead of the game. And the easiest way to do that is to avoid refined carbohydrates. And when I say refined, I mean things like white flour, white bread, rice, white pastas. Controlling these in the diet really helps to make a big difference in reducing the blood sugar levels. The other one is soda. There has been a lot of recent research that shows as little as two sodas a day can increase kidney disease by 30%, and that is pretty significant. Okay, so remember the second cause of kidney disease is hypertension/ high blood pressure. Most sodium does not come from the salt shaker that you put on your food. It is sort of hidden. And a big source of that is fast foods. Fast foods are loaded with sodium. They act as a preservative, and a flavor enhancer, so that is why they are in there. The other one is frozen dinners. And I am not talking about frozen vegetables. There is usually not any sodium in there, but it is the frozen meals and frozen dinners that are very high. And the third one is canned foods. In canned foods, the sodium is in there as a preservative, so if you are looking for canned foods, always look for the low sodium versions, or just try the natural approach instead.