Top 5 Takeaways On Sodium: Insights, Impacts, & Innovations For Public Health
The antidote to dietary doldrums, salt, that unassuming crystalline ingredient that makes many foods taste better, is found widely in the food supply. In the form of sodium chloride, simple table salt is the culinary component that, when added in the right amount, elevates an eating experience beyond the mere simplistic. While a little salt certainly can go a long way, the American consumer is more accustomed to ingesting a lot: sodium is overconsumed by all age groups, according to the 2020 – 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. With this in mind, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) commissioned consumer research on sodium and further examined the topic through an educational webinar, “Sodium Shift: Insights, Impacts, & Innovations For Public Health.”
The most salient takeaways from the webinar include:
- Consumers may not know exactly how much sodium they consume, but they want to cut back for health reasons.
Nearly everyone consumes too much sodium, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). As it stands, consequences of consistent high daily sodium intake could eventually include elevated blood pressure and increased risk for heart disease and stroke. With more than 119 million Americans confronting high blood pressure, the message to cut back on salt has been spread widely; however, nutrition education can only carry us so far. - Still, taste and price reign supreme.
Data from the 2024 IFIC Food & Health Survey convey that taste, followed by price, has the most impact on our food and beverage purchase decisions. Healthfulness as a purchase driver comes in third overall—despite media and online influencers regularly transmitting messages to eat for health and overall wellness. Ultimately, for most people, food does not make it on the plate without good taste and an affordable price tag. While shrinking sodium intake is imperative to protect public health and reduce premature deaths, health-promoting packaged foods with reduced levels of sodium must be both nutritious and delicious to deliver on health and flavor.. - Salt is part of the human experience, deeply intertwined with purpose and culture.
Salty is one of the basic tastes, and salt acts as a potent flavor enhancer. Doing much more than imparting only a salty taste, salt can “…improve the perception of product thickness, enhance sweetness, mask metallic or chemical off-notes, and round out overall flavor while improving flavor intensity.” High-salt usage emerged between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, and its shortage can engender food that tastes bad. Playing a role in food fermentation and preservation, salt shows up in a range of cultural foodways, including spice blends and condiments, such as fish sauce, soy sauce, and pepper sauce; sardines and anchovies; and cured meats. Besides the broad culinary contributions, salt has a storied past at the center of political and economic disputes.
- Salt has functional properties in food; therefore, complete removal lacks feasibility.
For starters, sodium is an essential nutrient in human nutrition. The body cannot store large amounts of sodium, which is critical for muscle function, including the heart, and keeping the nervous system working properly. Furthermore, sodium helps control fluid balance. Besides an important role in human nutrition, sodium can increase the overall safety and quality of food by lowering water activity, thus prolonging a food product’s shelf life and delaying spoilage. And, as noted above, salt can modify flavor of food; its removal likely necessitates the addition of other flavor-enhancing modifications to promote palatability.
- Everyone plays a part in solving for sodium.
More than 70% of the sodium that Americans consume comes from packaged and prepared foods, while about 11% is added during cooking or eating. In 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued voluntary sodium reduction targets for food manufacturers, restaurants, and food service operations. As industry progresses to meet the reduction targets, preference for salt may decline and industry can continue to support food safety. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that we consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium each day, which is the amount of sodium in about one teaspoon of table salt. While we may have spent 10,000 years consuming high amounts of salt and sodium, taste for salt is pliant: we can adjust our liking, ideally through gradual, across-the-board reductions. Small changes both on the individual level and in the food supply should yield positive results.