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
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.
And some dyes, bread additives, BVO, etc. commercial food processing in the US is a bit of a mess.
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.
I’ve read this a lot but have no idea how to increase potassium. There’s only so many bananas you can eat and clearly one every day is not enough
Even if there’s a salt substitute with potassium, I’m not sure the point when there’s no problem with salt you intentionally add. Especially since I rarely do
Getting large amounts of potassium is definitely tough, and for me it basically comes down to eating a lot of green salads, potato, banana, and coconut water.
I confess I’ll also add some potassium citrate to my water here and there to get a little more. But I don’t advise that unless you know what you’re doing.
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I drink like 8L of water a day, run four days a week, but I am confident that Ruffles are going to be the death of me, they’re just too good to care about the years at the end of my life.
Dill pickle lays here… I feel your pain
Can confirm, source: I eat ~7000mgs/day
Thats great, but can we do high fructose corn syrup next? That shit is just evil on multiple levels.
great hopefully next they reduce plastic by 100%
or at least ban things like styrofoam
Sorry I can’t say I need my food packaging to last thousands of years
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.
Fun fact: potassium chloride is what the United States has primarily used in lethal injection which has been used to execute 1400 people since 1976.
I’m absolutely going to hear some Karen later repeat this fact as a reason to protest against ‘government crackdowns on salt’ or something, aren’t I?
They are killing our roads!
It’s also what we use to salt our roads.
I bet they just put 20% less food in the package.
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.
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
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%.
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
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! 😭
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.
The 1980s was a time of great over reporting of unfinished science. From there through the 1990s was a nonstop mood swing over what was good or bad for you.
Doesn’t seem like much has changed since then.
I think you’re right, thematically. But we also know a heck of a lot more about all this than we did back then. Much more settled science compared to anecdote or conjecture.
And in the 80s they felt confident what they knew was a heck of a lot more than what was known in the 40s, probably would even have argued it was much more settled science compared to the anecdote and conjecture of yore.
Personally I am of the opinion that for all our knowledge there is still vastly more we don’t know than do, and that we should always try to be mindful of possible ignorance and “of-the-time-ness” of our knowledge in all things.
You’d have been correct then too! But I do think that things are different still. In the late 1970s, medical journals went from anecdote based to evidence based publishing. That surely took time to have an effect and now research physicians are rigorous professional scientists. I’m suggesting that the base is elevated compared to then.
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.
I was frustrated by the lack of low sodium options in processed foods before I cut them out entirely.
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
Sigh, ok.
Tell the intern to order three more semis of corn syrup.
*cries in spironolactone*
Embrace tradition, eat an entire jar of pickles in one sitting.
I dust pickled jalapenos with flour and airfry/broil them 👍
