Plant-based brands need to slash salt levels by adopting a similar ‘reduce and replace’ strategy used by the sugar-sweetened beverage sector in order to ensure that consumers can reap health benefits of the trend, according to a nutrition expert.
New research showing that 98% of homes have packaged food that exceeds the recommended amount of sodium, despite drastic reductions in the last 15 years, should be a wake-up call for manufacturers to cut back on the mineral even more and for consumers...
Government-supported policies that include food industry agreements to reduce salt intake would be cost effective in most of Europe saving nearly six million life-years lost to cardiovascular disease annually, say scientists.
The US is considerably behind the UK in terms of sodium reduction, but is catching up and demand will boom over the next year, the CEO of Kudos Blends says as it secures US distribution with Brenntag North America.
Special edition: Sodium reduction - The road ahead
Cost and the lack of a ‘silver bullet’ are still cited as an issue for reduced-sodium food, with savory products in general struggling with the challenge, but plenty of application-specific solutions abound, say industry players.
Special edition: Sodium reduction - The road ahead
Food manufacturers have spent a small fortune reformulating everything from bread to soup to reduce sodium in recent years, but new data suggests that US intakes have nevertheless continued to rise steadily.
If consumers are not demanding lower-sodium products, and the government does not mandate reductions, the food industry has “no incentive to be at the forefront of change”, according to one legal expert.
While Campbell Soup’s reduced sodium u-turn pales into insignificance when compared with the New Coke debacle, it should serve as a cautionary tale for all food manufacturers embarking on reformulation work, according to marketing experts.
Strategies to reduce sodium in populations should “force industry compliance” through government regulations and laws, according to an editorial in Nutrition.
As food formulators continue to reformulate for lower salt foods, a Harvard-led study adds further support for cutting sodium and boosting potassium intakes.
