Is Salt a Villain?

US food manufacturers are reducing salt (euphemistically referred to as “sodium” on most food labels). That’s because “eating too much salt is a major cause of high blood pressure, which… costs the U.S. health system $73 billion a year” in treatment for hypertension, heart attacks and strokes (Reuters story, March 1, 2010, here).

Or does it? Some studies have shown it has no effect. We do know though that most of the salt we eat comes from processed foods, snack foods and restaurant meals and salt content in those has been going up until recently.

Some manufacturers now are placing reduced salt on the edge of the food, which masks the change in taste, while others are adding different spices to mask the salt reduction, while a few are forming industry lobbying groups like the Truthful Labeling Coalition (website here) which says that chicken injected with salt, water and other ingredients should not be promoted as “natural.” Some are touting “reduced sodium” on their packaging and some are reducing amounts slowly so that consumers don’t notice. Others, like Campbell Soups, have found their lower salt products did not sell and so they have restored the salt.

When I decided to check the labels on some of what we buy from Trader Joe’s, we were under, or around, the recommended limit of 1500 milligrams per day. For young adults it’s 2300 and the American average is 3400 (excluding what they add from salt shakers). Hypothetically, what if one of our teenagers eats this:

Breakfast: Joe’s O’s cereal (one cup) - 280 mg
Lunch: Sandwich with Shepherd’s Bread (1 slice) – 200 mg + Columbus pastrami (2 oz) – 390 mg
Dinner: Chicken Sicilian Sausage (2 links) – 570 x 2 mgs

Right there it’s 2010 mgs. I think he’s probably above the 2300 recommended limit on some days, but not on all.

So what do the experts recommend if most consumers are indifferent to food labels or they are watching calories and sugar but not salt? Should it be a voluntary collaboration with the U.S. food industry or a national tax on salt? The answer seems to be: a voluntary program, based on a similar salt-reduction campaign in Britain. The industry here has set a target of a 10% reduction and New York City is even more ambitious at 20%. Will consumers decide their newly revamped foods aren’t salty enough and add it themselves? Will they buy a competitor’s product instead? The White House is encouraging all manufacturers to reduce salt collectively so that none suffer – so we can avoid FDA regulation.

Photo credit: Paul Goyette/Wikipedia