New York City Wants Less Salt (can I expect worse news)

New York City

NEW YORK – First it was the elimination of trans fat; now, it’s sodium that New York City officials are attacking, the New York Times reports. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg’s administration unveiled a proposal to encourage food makers and restaurant chains to curb the amount of salt in their foods.

The city says health agencies in other parts of the country support their goal of lowering sodium in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent during the next five years. Reducing salt in foods would lower high blood pressure incidences and would probably thwart some heart attacks and strokes related to that condition, health officials say.

“We all consume way too much salt, and most of the salt we consume is in the food when we buy it,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, city health commissioner. The city health department is heading the charge for less salt. With 80 percent of salt in our diet coming from restaurant or packaged food, Farley said lowering the sodium amount in those foods would keep people healthier.

Meanwhile, food manufacturers are slashing sodium in their products, but are not emphasizing the results, the Wall Street Journal reports. The companies are discovering that consumers like it better when salt levels decline slowly over time.

For example, by 2011, ConAgra Food’s Chef Boyardee canned pasta will have 35 percent less sodium — a drop that took five years — but the lower salt will not be trumpeted on the label. Campbell Soup’s original V8 juice also quietly reduced its salt by 32 percent over an eight-year period.

“If you gradually move sodium down in products, the consumers that use those products get used to them still tasting good but at lower salt,” said Douglas Balentine, Unilever NV’s North American director of nutrition and health.

Last October, ConAgra revealed that it would reduce salt in around 80 percent of its products by an average of 20 percent by 2015, while the Sara Lee Corp. announced a comparable pledge last month.