Salt shaker

The Boston Globe, Karen Weintraub, February 1, 2010

Sure, a big deli pickle is salty. So is a strip of bacon or handful of chips. But who knew that a single serving of milk or yogurt has about 5 percent, or around 120 mg, of the recommended daily allowance of sodium? And a slice of bread – one slice, not a sandwich – has nearly 10 percent of the RDA.

Now, led by a New York push to cut salt consumption nationwide, health departments and advocacy groups around the country are pressuring restaurants and food manufacturers to cut back. Last month, the National Salt Reduction Initiative, which includes the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Boston Public Health Commission, announced it hoped to reduce Americans’ total salt intake by at least 20 percent over the next five years. At the same time, some researchers are questioning whether cutting salt consumption for everyone is necessary or even wise.

To meet its 20 percent goal, the national initiative has set two- and four-year voluntary targets for gradually reducing salt levels in 61 categories of packaged food and 25 classes of restaurant food.

Americans eat at least twice as much salt as they should, according to the initiative. By slowly dialing back the salt content of foods, consumers won’t even notice the difference, public health officials promise.

“It’s pretty hard for any of us to avoid’’ foods like milk, bread, and breakfast cereal, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Bibbins-Domingo said her patients sometimes speak with pride about replacing fast food and chips with healthier alternatives such as vegetable soup. But “from a pure sodium basis, they would have been better off eating the potato chips,’’ she said, because soups are often so salt-laden.

(Many people use the terms salt and sodium interchangeably, though there are types of salt that do not contain sodium. There are about 2,300 mg, or 2.3 grams, of sodium in the average teaspoon of salt.)

A typical cup of commercially prepared soup easily contains the equivalent of a quarter teaspoon of salt – usually the smallest of a set of measuring spoons. So does one tuna sandwich on white bread with mayo. Even raw chicken is loaded up with salt by processors, Bibbins-Domingo said, as a preservative, but also to increase its water weight and therefore its cost.

Most food could be just as safe and tasty with less salt, according to the initiative.

A number of companies, such as the Campbell Soup Co., Kraft Foods, and Unilever, had already committed to reducing the sodium in at least some of their products.

“Campbell’s has done a pretty good job of reducing sodium levels and if Campbell’s can do it, other companies can do it, too,’’ said Julie Greenstein, deputy director of Health Promotion Policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group that has long lobbied for salt reduction.Continued…

via There’s a push to reduce the amount of salt in foods. How much will it help, or hurt? – The Boston Globe.