The FDA’s Renewed Focus on Sodium Reduction
In the FDA’s new Nutrition Innovation Strategy, announced in March 2018, sodium reduction has reclaimed the forefront of the conversation relating to improving public health.
In late March 2018, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb outlined why sodium reduction was to be at the forefront of the FDA’s new Nutrition Innovation Strategy. This updated strategy leans on new science and statistics to improve nutrition and decrease preventable diseases on a population level. It encompasses 5 key elements that are believed to make the greatest generational impact on public health, including modernizing claims, ingredient labels, and standards of identity; implementing the Nutrition Facts Label and Menu Labeling; and reducing sodium. According to the FDA, Gottlieb proclaimed, “there remains no single more effective public health action related to nutrition than the reduction of sodium in the diet.”(1)
For large food manufacturers, reducing sodium in their products has been an ongoing goal since research began linking excessive sodium consumption to high blood pressure. However, regulatory action to enforce industry-wide sodium reduction has recently been obscured by uncertainty, leading to stagnant planning for the future.(2) With this newly announced Nutrition Innovation Strategy, Gottlieb explained that the administration plans to advance short-term voluntary sodium targets based on a study being conducted on Dietary Reference Intakes by the National Academies, to be released in 2019. The FDA also plans to continue an open dialogue surrounding longer-term sodium reduction goals for food manufacturers.(1)
A recent microsimulation model study conducted by a team led by Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, BMBCh, MSc, MFPH (Imperial College London, England) and Chris Kypridemos, MD, MPH, PhD (University of Liverpool, England) and colleagues quantified the potential health and economic effects to occur if food manufacturers were to achieve 100% compliance of the 2-year and 10-year sodium reformulation targets proposed by the FDA. The researchers ultimately found that the implementation of these targets would lead to substantial public health improvements and cost savings. Most optimally, according to the researchers, achieving 100% compliance with the FDA’s 10-year voluntary targets could potentially prevent approximately 450,000 cases of cardiovascular disease and gain 2.1 million quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). The researchers estimated that cost savings of up to approximately $41 billion could result from reduced healthcare costs, regained productivity, and further cost savings incurred from informal care. (2) Even when assuming more realistic levels of compliance and reduced-sodium food availability, smaller health gains could be potentially beneficial as well.
Though reformulating processed foods with less sodium comes with an abundance of challenges for food manufacturers, Gottlieb reminded industry stakeholders that there are many ways to create lower sodium food products, making them healthier without sacrificing taste.(3) However, salt serves a variety of functional purposes, and lowering sodium contents in processed foods has the potential to dramatically change the product beyond just flavor. Simply removing salt could mean removing its benefits as a preservative, texture enhancer, and protein binder, to name a few (4). The good news is that through careful, methodical testing, successful product reformulation to reduce sodium is possible.
The Cargill Salt Group is not simply a salt supplier – we also partner with customers to achieve their sodium reduction goals. Because Cargill is primarily a food company, we have a wide breadth of knowledge across the food industry. This provides food customers with the opportunity to collaborate with our full technical support team of food scientists and food safety specialists who have deep formulation and application expertise. Considering the FDA’s proposed sodium reduction guidelines, these state-of-the-art resources, combined with our expansive portfolio of lower sodium products, can seamlessly help food processors achieve their sodium reduction goals.
- https://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/ucm602651.htm
- http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002551
- https://chicago.suntimes.com/food/fda-chief-pushes-for-better-labels-to-reduce-disease-obesity/
- https://www.cargill.com/salt-in-perspective/function-of-salt-in-food