FDA wants to cut sodium in packaged and processed foods by about 20%
FDA wants to cut sodium in packaged and processed foods by about 20%
The agency wants to lower how much salt we consume over the next three years to an average of 2,750 milligrams per day. That's still above the recommended limit of 2,300 mg.
The agency wants to lower how much salt we consume over the next three years to an average of 2,750 milligrams per day. That's still above the recommended limit of 2,300 mg.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday laid out fresh goals to cut sodium levels in packaged and processed foods by about 20%, after its prior efforts to address a growing epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases showed early signs of success.
The FDA in October 2021 had set guidelines to trim sodium levels in foods ranging from potato chips to hamburgers in a bid to prevent excessive intake of salt that can trigger high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
The agency is now seeking voluntary curbs from packaged-food makers such as PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Campbell Soup. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Now do the same for sugar
a former coworker sat and tried to convince me that sugar is neither bad for you nor addictive. the sugar lobby psychological manipulation propaganda machine is the behemoth that has to be dismantled before any meaningful change can even be attempted
this coworker was an instructional academic librarian who included confirmation bias and how to avoid it in her teaching
Agreed, corn syrup shouldn't be added to almost all food on the taxpayers' dime.
Cut sugar by 75% and we're getting somewhere.
How about 50%. Also do sugar and probably saturated fat. Also ban high fructose corn syrup.
ban high fructose corn syrup.
Won't happen as long as the corn subsidies are in place. Corn is literally everywhere and the US is probably #1 in the world in terms of converting corn into things that aren't corn.
I went to visit family recently, and they were sipping on a carton of Bright and Early by HI-C with an orange on the label. I had to look. Ingredients: High-fructose corn syrup, citric acid. NO JUICE
Disgusting.
And some dyes, bread additives, BVO, etc. commercial food processing in the US is a bit of a mess.
The US FDA has addressed BVO finally, even though everyone else already stopped. https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-updates/fda-revokes-regulation-allowing-use-brominated-vegetable-oil-bvo-food
Also also, can we revisit nutritional information on the packages? Make the serving sizes more easy to understand to humans, I'm not measuring out cups, ounces, or grams of food. Every container should have a label, even if it came in a bigger package. Sweeteners should be combined into parentheses too so the ingredients don't look like "water, flour, glucose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, high fructose corn syrup, sugar" (now with less sugar!)
And rounding down shouldn't be allowed. There's a lot where you can see this on 2 different sizes of the same product or if they give a per serving and a per container, where the serving is zero but the larger package is non-zero.
If they say it's zero, then it had better be actually zero.
I feel like I recall a story about a chip company that slowly reduced their salt content by like 50% over a number of years and literally no one noticed or complained.
I definitely saw another story about how they were researching pyramid-shaped salt crystals because they have higher surface area to volume, and with cuboid salt you wind up swallowing it before the whole thing even dissolves, so you're not even getting a theoretical flavor experience, it's just going straight into your gut.
We eat too much salt. It's absurd.
Salt is not an issue if you're healthy and drink enough water. Our problem is we're not healthy and don't drink enough water...we eat chips and drink coke with it.
I'd caveat it's not unhealthy if you sweat a lot, drink lots of water, AND consume a level of dietary potassium 2x that of your sodium intake, which pretty much nobody is. (and disclaimer I'm no doctor).
Sodium and potassium work together with opposite functions via the sodium-potassium pump. Too much salt leads to water retention within cells. That's the best case scenario so long as you're drinking lots of water. Too much salt absent of potassium will send blood pressure up due to vasoconstriction.
Potassium helps the body regulate fluid retention and helps to concentrate urine while helping with vasodilation of blood vessels (among many other important functions).
Just learning all this as I've taken a deep-dive on this stuff for my own health as well as my mom's.
Can confirm, source: I eat ~7000mgs/day
As someone who has always been on a low-sodium diet, but who nonetheless has a hankering for processed food, thank fuck.
Everything has become so ridiculously salty, if you aren’t already used to the salt, that it’s largely inedible. It would otherwise be really good, but holy shit.
If we can get people consuming less salt in some places, they will want less in other places as well, maybe food as a whole will be less salty.. that would be a win in every single way for everyone. Everyone who regularly eats with me tends to want less salt in their food overall as a result, so I know it works, and it doesn’t even take that long.
Thats great, but can we do high fructose corn syrup next? That shit is just evil on multiple levels.
I like chips and guac, but every time I go to the store and the low sodium chips are out of stock...I don't buy chips.
Once you get used to it the regular ones are disgustingly salty.
I grew up in a low salt household and now I'm extremely sensitive to salts, so most chips are a no-go for me
Casa Sanchez (if available in your area) makes great tortilla chips that are noticably lower in salt than other brands. They aren't marketed as low sodium, but because they aren't super coated in salt like, for example Tostitos, it's the only brand I buy. They also taste way better imo
For sure, and my grocery is frequently out of their fresh pico de gallo, trying to push me to buy their ketchuppy sugar-filled “salsa” with infinite shelf life
I also don’t buy chips
I've been raising the cocoa % on the chocolates I buy and I'm on 80% now. I had a regular bar recently that was gifted to me and I could barely take a bite because it was so excessively sugary. Unfortunately I can't go any higher than 80% as it is not sold here (expensive imports only) but I definitely would if I could, and honestly I would recommend anyone to try this starting at 40%.
They'll up the chloride content by 40% to compensate, though.
Unironically, yes. A common substitute for table salt (sodium chloride NaCl) is potassium salt (potassium chloride KCl).
The good news is that the health problems with table salt is the sodium, not the chloride. Potassium actually has the opposite effect on the body, so a higher potassium intake would actually help treat a high sodium intake.
I bet they just put 20% less food in the package.
It's especially bad, in my experience, with plant-based foods that they're trying to make taste like meat.
I had the Impossible Whopper once... it was almost like eating a soft block of salt.
Plant based meats are bassically the definition of highly processed food.
Yeah, not really my thing overall, but I was curious.
If they started selling lab-grown meat, I'd give it a try.
No, not my salt and vinegar kettle chips! 😭
Too bad, they're vinegar and salt now!
Sea salt flavor is now just sea flavor.
Is this going to turn into conservatives freaking out and just eating salt shakers to prove how not-woke they are?
It's really annoying how every attempt to make things better seems to be met with "fuck you I refuse to acknowledge anything beyond my short term comfort"
The only downside I see is the hospital resources they'll take up while dying of complications from high blood pressure.
Some streamer should go with that and see if we can make it a thing! Conservatives will be so busy trying to figure out their high blood pressure, they’ll forget to vote to make everyone suffer
The risks of sodium aren't universal (some people appear to have immunity), and were exaggerated by the sugar industry.
THIS! My cardiologist has instructed me to eat 7-10 grams of salt a day. He literally encouraged me to eat things like chips, pretzels, pickles, salted nuts, and ramen to get more.
I supplement with electrolyte mixes with 1g sodium. They cost over $1 each and I am supposed to drink 2-3 a day. I still don’t get enough salt to feel my best.
It’s fucking obnoxious to have health conditions that mean I need a thing that so much of the world tells me is bad, and everyone else is trying to get rid of.
Homing in on a single number at a time is like plugging one leak and having another spring up. The laser focus on reducing fat, for example, led to foods using more salt and sugar to compensate and that created other problems. We need a more holistic approach to diet.
Who cares about sodium, can we get rid of high fructose corn syrup? I mean reducing sodium sounds good, but it's not even on the same playing field
Also stuff like sodium nitrate and other fantastic chemicals that make food last for 100's of years
How else are we gonna ensure a stable supply of post-fallout Mac & Cheese, InstaMash, Salisbury Steak, and Cheezy Poofs?
It’s not just the chips that are the problem (although many brands are so salty they burn my mouth) , everyone knows they’re salted.
Hopefully this includes the chicken nuggets and other prepared foods that not everyone realizes are high in sodium
I was frustrated by the lack of low sodium options in processed foods before I cut them out entirely.
Sigh, ok.
Tell the intern to order three more semis of corn syrup.
Good.
*cries in spironolactone*
Embrace tradition, eat an entire jar of pickles in one sitting.
I dust pickled jalapenos with flour and airfry/broil them 👍
If I can’t buy a packet of crisps (‘chips’ for the yanks btw ;) ) and get a 10” pink Himalayan salt crystal in the bag, I don’t know what the world is coming to.
Just let me die fat, you bastards
Keto people argue about sodium.
I don't know who the fuck is eating this garbage but I think whoever they are does not care about sodium
Do we already know what manufacturers would replace it with to maintain flavour? Eg in the past when manufacturers had to cut down on fat, they've replaced it with sugar and hydrogenated oils?
They should be putting fats back in and cutting out carbs/sugars
Mostly potassium salt, although with some other recipe changes to account for the different flavor.
The good news is that potassium is well understood nutritionally. Most Americans do not get enough of it. To a first approximation, it is anti-sodium health wise, so it is a double win in that it both reduces sodium intake, and counters the effect of a still high sodium intake.
Food? Maybe their product doesn’t need to be addictive but can instead include a higher percentage of food ingredients
That's certainly a possibility, but I'm not sure it's the most likely one in America, so I'd like to better understand the consequences
Are people still buying this disgusting trash? Wow.
NO
(As I devour half a bag of family sized Lays)
NOT ME
Remember that the aggregate across food sources is the problem. You’re getting too much from all over. This is at least a step towards fixing the bigger problem.
This is so dumb. You can't fix this problem at the packaging level. You have to convince people to eat less, or eat smarter.
You definitively can fix many things at the product level
Food in Europe is generally less bad for you due to regulations
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