FDA Wants Manufacturers to Reduce Sodium in Processed and Prepared Foods

It’s a never-ending battle to get manufacturers to come up with healthy and responsible amounts of sugar in their prepared foods.  Now salt is on the chopping block too.  Sugar and salt help to preserve processed foods, making them more shelf stable…and quite frankly, tastier.  The problem, of course, is that now we are consuming WAY too much of basically everything.

According to the FDA, shocking levels of sodium lurk in processed and prepared foods. Um, there is even a Salty Six list that the American Heart Association has put together.  Bread, lunch meat, pizza, etc top the list.  {Sadly, when I make those items from scratch {minus lunch meat, of course}, my recipes call for a scant amount of salt.}

While there are no immediate plans to mandate manufacturing changed, the FDA is compiling of list with suggested guidelines.  According to NPR, 75% of our daily salt intake comes from prepared foods and restaurant dining–not the salt shaker.  If people could cut down their salt intake by “just 400 mg a day,” we could prevent “as many as 28,000 deaths annually.”

Okay, between sugar and salt, here’s my takeaway:  Make your own food from staple ingredients as often as you can.  Sure, convenience matters, I totally buy processed foods for that exact reason–but I try really hard to make sure they aren’t staples in our diet.  I think that alone would solve the problem.  What do you think?

~Mavis