FDA to Regulate the Amount of Salt in Processed Foods
The FDA has announced that it is going to regulate
the amount of salt that can be contained processed foods. The government is launching a massive program to calculate the amount of salt in processed foods -- from spaghetti sauce to hot dogs to soups. Then, it will set limits on salt for those foods.
Officials have not determined the salt limits. In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.
The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.
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Humans have an innate taste for salt, which is needed for some basic biological functions. But beyond flavor, salt is also used as a preservative to inhibit microbial growth; it gives texture and structure to certain foods; and it helps leaven and brown baked goods.
Gary K. Beauchamp, a psychobiologist and director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said salt also provides another, less understood quality. "It gives something that food people refer to as 'mouthfeel,' " said Beauchamp, who also served on the Institutes of Medicine committee. "For some soups, for instance, it's not just the salty taste -- sodium makes the soup feel thicker."
There are a lot of questions about the proposed regulations. For one thing, what about inherently salty foods such as pickles and sardines? Some experts think those foods will be exempted from the rules. Others think legal limits are a very bad idea because major food companies will just replace salt with some unhealthy chemical.
Meanwhile, major companies are fully aware that the writing is on the wall for sodium and they are working like crazy to create products that are low-sodium that people will actually buy. Because, unfortunately, low-sodium products don't sell as well as higher-sodium foods. Lay's, for example, is working on a new shape for sodium chloride crystals that it hopes will allow it to reduce the salt
by 25 percent in Lay's Classic potato chips.
