|
|
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Food manufacturers and restaurants can no longer take the sodium issue with a grain of salt. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines, the American Heart Association, as well as state and local municipalities have salt on their radar screens and they are pushing for more regulations to lower intakes. There has even been a suggestion that foods high in salt need warning labels.
The medical consensus that eating less sodium will result in less disease and fewer deaths from heart disease is pretty well established. And, though there may be some who voice disagreement with this public health message, the evidence is mounting and people are beginning to hear the message.
We have a population that loves salty foods. Experts want us to eat less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. A lofty goal since we currently eat between 3,600 – 4,800 milligrams of sodium daily. Close to 80% of our sodium intake comes from processed and restaurant foods, 12% is naturally occurring in foods, 6% comes from the salt shaker and 5% from salt added during cooking. It’s clear why food companies and restaurants are being targeted to get the salt out of their products.
It isn’t as easy as it sounds to just take the salt out of a recipe. Beside taste, and we all love that salty taste, salt is a functional ingredient.
Salt preserves foods from spoiling by creating a hostile environment for microorganisms to grow. Salted meat and fish kept early man from starving.
Salt adds texture to foods. It strengthens the gluten (a protein) in bread dough allowing it to rise without tearing and exploding. It improves the tenderness of cured meats such as ham. Salt helps develop the rind on cheese and gives each variety its characteristic consistency.
Salt provides fermentation control so that baked goods rise at a steady rate in the oven. It also helps in making cheese and sauerkraut.
Salt promotes the typical color that develops in ham, bacon, hot dogs, and bologna.
Knowing all this you can appreciate the difficulty food companies and recipe developers have when they want to alter a product. And, to complicate matters further, we often reject foods with less sodium. Research has shown that for some foods consumers can taste a sodium reduction as small as 8%. When the consumer’s traditional brand does not deliver the anticipated taste, the company can lose sales.
To label a food “reduced” sodium it must have at least 25% less sodium than the traditional variety. This reduction may be too low for consumer acceptance. To get around this problem, many food manufactures are taking a step-down approach – lowering the sodium in smaller increments so the consumer can adjust to the less salty taste over time. Campbell has successfully done that with many soups in their line. Their traditional tomato soup, an all-time consumer favorite, now has 480 milligrams in a serving, a reduction of 32% from the original recipe containing 917 milligrams. Sargento cheese has lowered the sodium by 25% in many of their standard sliced and shredded varieties. This is an especially hard reduction because salt is so critical to the cheese making process.
Restaurants chains such as Denny’s, Burger King, Au Bon Pain, KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have either lowered the sodium in some choices or are currently working on menu alterations. All these initiatives are good. As the companies and restaurants lower the salt in products, our desire for very salty foods will shift and we will be more interested in eating lower sodium choices. Research has shown that even modest daily sodium reductions, as little as 400 milligrams, can produce health benefits.
Right now most consumers equate low sodium with lack of taste. For this reason, many companies choose to make “silent reductions.” They simply lower the sodium without touting the change boldly in advertising campaigns. As consumers embrace the newer lower sodium foods, this approach may change.
Reducing sodium levels in food is challenging both from a processing standpoint and from a consumer acceptance position. This points out, once again, that food is a complicated business.
For the sodium values in over 17,000 foods take a look at one of our books, The Complete Food Counter available from Pocket Books.
© NRH Nutrition Consultants, Inc.
Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN is a registered dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with 12 current titles and sales of more than 8.5 million books. The books are widely available at your local or on-line bookseller.
Current titles include:
The Diabetes Counter, 4th Ed., 2011
The Protein Counter, 3rd Ed., 2011
The Calorie Counter, 5th Ed., 2010
The Ultimate Carbohydrate Counter, 3rd Ed., 2010
The Complete Food Counter, 3rd ed., 2009
The Fat Counter, 7th ed., 2009
The Healthy Wholefoods Counter, 2008
The Cholesterol Counter, 7th Ed., 2008
For more information on Jo-Ann and her books, go to TheNutritionExperts
Subscribe to our FREE Ezine and receive current Health News, be eligible for discounted products/services and coupons related to your Health. We publish 24/7.
HealthNewsDigest.com
For advertising/promotion, email: [email protected] Or call toll free: 877- 634-9180