In a bid to cut Americans’ salt consumption, the FDA is proposing using salt substitutes in everyday foods.
On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed changes to the standards of identity (SOIs) for foods that include salt to permit the use of safe and suitable salt substitutes.
In 2021, the FDA set a new voluntary goal for manufacturers and chain restaurants to cut salt levels by an average of 12 percent in packaged foods.
This latest move is part of the Biden administration’s National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. The announcement further supports the Administration’s White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities, a nationwide call to action.
Excessive salt consumption has been linked to high blood pressure – hypertension – a leading cause of heart attack and stroke.
“Most people in the U.S. consume too much sodium. The majority of sodium consumed comes from processed, packaged, and prepared foods, not from salt people add to their food when cooking or eating,” said Susan Mayne, the director of FDA’s food safety and nutrition division, reports Reuters.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), around 90 percent of Americans consume more than twice the recommended salt intake each day. This means that most people use on average 3,400 milligrams of salt daily. That amount is about twice the 1,500 milligrams of salt recommended by the AHA.
U.S. Department of Agriculture/Lance Cheung. Public Domain.
The FDA’s proposal in depth
Friday’s proposed rule looks to change the FDA’s “standards of identity” (SOI) for over 20 items, ranging from cheese to cereal flour. This simply means the SOIs list ingredients that standardized foods must contain, and which ingredients are optional.
Most SOIs do not currently permit the use of salt substitutes. The proposed rule uses a “horizontal” approach to updating the SOIs. This means that the proposed rule would affect multiple SOIs and apply across various foods and categories of foods.
Specifically – 80 SOIs that specify salt as a required or an optional ingredient.would be amended under the FDA’s proposal. This means that 140 of the 250 SOIs currently established for a wide variety of foods would be affected.
Permitted salt substitutes are not listed. Instead, they are defined as being safe and suitable ingredients (or a combination of ingredients) used to replace some or all of the salt in a standardized food.
It should be noted that according to the Cleveland Clinic, salt substitutes can achieve a salty taste by replacing sodium chloride with potassium in diets. Still, the data also warns that some consumers with underlying conditions could be harmed.
However, salt substitutes are subject to the same labeling requirements as other ingredients and are currently used in non-standardized foods in the U.S.
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