Sodium Guidance
On October 14 of this year, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration issued voluntary guidance for sodium reductions in commercially processed, packaged, and prepared foods.
The guidance proposes decreasing average daily sodium intake by about 12% from the currently estimated intake of 3,400 milligrams (mg) of sodium/day down to 3,000 mg/day, over 2.5 years.
The FDA explained in its guidance that for 40 years it has attempted to reduce sodium intake, mainly via ultimately ineffective educational efforts. Through its new voluntary guidance, the FDA shares the burden of sodium reduction with food manufacturers and restaurants. The body of public health and our own bodies will be the beneficiaries of this new move.
A flurry of media attention was heaped onto these new sodium goals. Just search “new sodium guidelines” on the internet, and you’ll find a bevy of opinions and news articles. Our Eatiquette team enjoys digging into the primary source material before anything, so we read through the final guidance ourselves. Here are some of the most interesting takeaways to help you understand what this guidance means for you!
How much sodium should we be consuming?
Sodium is an essential nutrient that helps our bodies function properly. It also plays a vital role in food safety, preservation, and stability. So yes, you do need SOME sodium in your diet and food.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2020-2025) recommend persons over the age of 14 limit their sodium intake to 2,300 mg/day. The new FDA guidelines propose to reduce daily average sodium intake to 3,000 mg/day. What about that 700 mg discrepancy? Well, the FDA addressed this by referring to “technical and market constraints on sodium reduction and reformulation.” The takeaway for our Eatiquette Team was that a regulatory body needs to find a workable middle ground to appease all sides, such as food manufacturers and food consumers. Basically, it’s a compromise.
Why is it so important for Americans to reduce their sodium intake?
Consuming too much sodium can contribute to hypertension (high blood pressure), leading to heart disease and stroke, the 1st and 5th causes of death in the United States, respectively.
Epidemiological studies show that reducing sodium to 2,200 mg/day can result in billions of dollars of healthcare savings as well as prevent between 280,000 and 500,000 premature deaths over a 10-year time span.
That’s a lot of dollars, and a lot of lives!
Why is the FDA targeting just commercially processed/prepared foods?
Because more than 70% of Americans’ total sodium intake is from commercially prepared/processed foods. The issue of excess sodium isn’t the problem of the home cook so much as manufacturing and commercial preparation. However, it does affect the home cook when preparing home-cooked meals, especially when using processed foods, such as canned beans or vegetables.
Why is this guidance voluntary and not mandatory?
The FDA addresses this a few times in their document, but overall a voluntary approach creates flexibility and encourages innovation. Further, the FDA acknowledged two voluntary sodium initiatives that were successful in the U.K. and Canada. We are hoping the same will hold true of the United States’ efforts.
How will the food industry even do this?
The federal guidance does not provide any specific tactics for reducing sodium so much as it just says, “reduce it to this amount!”
Specific sodium concentration goals are provided for 163 types of food in 16 general food categories. For instance, the “Dairy” category includes 15 sub-categories such as “cream cheese,” “brie cheese,” feta cheese,” “cheese spreads,” “plant-based products marketed as cheese alternatives,” and more. One thing we all agreed on around the Eatiquette table was that we sure are happy we aren’t the ones responsible for regulating sodium with such a copious and detailed list of food categories.
While the FDA sodium suggestion ranges between 170 and 1160 mg/100gr for 90% of products, in our mobile app we mark anything above 540 mg/100gr as high, i.e. red (around 10% of our products).
How is sodium measured?
The FDA guidance on measuring sodium is based on “milligrams of sodium per 100 grams of food” (not per serving or per package), which is exactly how we express nutritional info in our Eatiquette app! Needless to say, we were excited about this.
The FDA presented target goals and upper bounds for sodium for each of the 163 food categories in Appendix Table 1. If you’re a geek for numbers and tables, we recommend perusing it to see the comprehensive sodium ranges across all the categories.
Let’s take a look at how the guidance will affect specific foods!
We were curious how these new sodium concentration goals would affect existing products in our Eatiquette app so we took a look at salad dressings.
The targeted average sodium in salad dressings, as laid out in the new guidance, is 690 milligrams/per 100 grams, and the limit is 980 mg/100 grams.
In the Eatiquette app, let’s check out Newman’s balsamic dressing. It has 933 mg of sodium per 100-gram serving – this is definitely higher than the target amount of 690 mg/100 grams but slightly less than the limit.
The dressings with the lowest amount of sodium in the Eatiquette app are well below the target with some dressings having just 33 mg/100 gram of food and a few dressings having no sodium at all!
This begs the question, “what’s on your salad?” Well, whatever dressing you choose, in 2.5 years, it will likely contain 12% less sodium than it once did. Will our tastebuds notice??? We don’t know, but our arteries probably will, and for that, we are thankful.