If the industry followed the guidelines, the FDA said, that would help reduce that level to about 3,000 mg per day in two years, and 2,300 mg in a decade. FDA estimates less than 10 percent of packaged foods account for more than 80 percent of sales. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a majority of salt does not come from the salt shaker, but from fatty and processed food prepared in the restaurants. (In its announcement, the FDA notes it’s kind of dumb how one salad dressing can contain 150 milligrams of sodium while another has 2,000.) The government says the guidelines amount to a “a common system for defining and measuring progress on reducing sodium”, and would apply to most processed and prepared foods, which the FDA divides into roughly 150 categories, each with a corresponding sodium-level recommendation. One in three individuals has high blood pressure, which has been linked to diets high in sodium and is a major risk factor cause of heart disease and stroke. It will target certain food products to meet the guideline.
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The FDA has written draft targets on which the public and industry will be able to comment.
“If everyone could just decrease their sodium intake a little bit, it will make a huge difference in preventing heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and everything else that goes with an excess salt intake”, says Dr. Bisognano. People would take the decisions of how much salt to have in their food to improve their health, Burwell added.
To achieve a significant impact, the FDA is especially encouraging adoption by big food manufacturers whose products make up a significant proportion of national sales in the United States. The only people who need to worry about reducing sodium are those with high blood pressure and high salt consumption, he said. Among those, African Americans are about 50%, while about 10% are children with ages 8 to 17.
The voluntary guidelines are aimed at almost 150 food categories that range from baked goods to soups.
Many U.S. food companies, including Campbell Soup Co., General Mills Inc. and Kraft Heinz Co., have already cut salt levels to some extent in anticipation of the guidelines, which have been in the works since 2011.
Mars, the maker of Uncle Ben’s rice, was quoted in the press as expressing their support, saying the company reduced sodium in its products by 25% from 2007 to 2012 and that it plans to reduce sodium an additional 20% by 2021. To most of us, that number doesn’t mean much (to give you an idea, that’s about as much sodium as found in a teaspoon and a half of table salt).
In the meantime, the institute issued another report in 2013 that said there is no good evidence that eating sodium at very low levels – below the 2,300 milligrams a day that the government recommends – offers benefits.
The proposal marks the first time the FDA has taken a stance on sodium; however, it’s only a suggested reduction, and the finalized version of these guidelines may not be in place for more than a year.
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is setting its sights on salt.
