New voluntary guidelines for the amount of sodium in processed foods were proposed by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a move that has been called for by health officials for quite some time, according to the New York Times.
Advocates of the reduction of sodium in the American diet say the move could reduce the incidents of high blood pressure, which leads to strokes and heart attacks. The average American adult consumes as much as 3,400 milligrams of sodium each day, the equivalent of 1.5 teaspoons of salt. Sodium is the primary ingredient in table salt.
But, surprisingly, most of the sodium a person consumes is already in the food we eat before we ever pick up the salt shaker on the dinner table. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 70 percent of the sodium intake in the US is included in packaged and processed foods, such as breads, salad dressings, canned soups and cheese.
The new guidelines recommend cutting the sodium to an average of 2,300 milligrams per day, or about two-thirds the current national average. The FDA said the health advantages of reducing the sodium intake below the new level were well documented.
Not everyone agrees with the recommendations, however, and David A. McCarron, a research associate in the Department of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis, said there have been other studies that show the too little sodium can be harmful to your health.
But, the director of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden said the agency believes the current consumption is too high.
“We understand that there are some researchers who do not agree on the general consensus” of the correlation between sodium and poor health outcomes,” argues Freiden. “We find fatal flaws” in the research, he added.
The food industry is generally supportive of the new guidelines, and the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association released a statement saying, “we believe additional work is needed to determine the acceptable range of sodium intake for optimal health.” The group expressed concerns over the studies that show too little sodium could be harmful as well, but agreed to cooperate with the FDA on the new targets.
Dr. Freiden wrote in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association a decrease in sodium intake of as little as 400 milligrams per day may prevent as many as 32,000 heart attacks and 20,000 strokes each year, and adds 39 other countries already had established targets for sodium levels in foods.
A number of US companies already have programs in place to reduce the amount of sodium in their products, including Walmart, Unilever, PepsiCo General Mills and Nestlé.