The FDA encourages nutritious diets that support health and wellness. The U.S. faces an ever-growing epidemic of preventable diet-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Improving nutrition offers one of the greatest opportunities for reducing these and other chronic illnesses and premature death. The FDA promotes nutritious eating patterns by encouraging industry to make foods healthier and by providing information so that consumers can make healthier food choices.
Spotlight
The FDA is taking another step in its sodium reduction efforts by issuing new, Phase II voluntary sodium reduction targets in draft guidance Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods (Edition 2). The new draft targets, issued on August 15, 2024, build on the final, voluntary sodium reduction goals issued in 2021, now known as Phase I. The FDA will review all comments received by January 13, 2025 before issuing these targets in final guidance.
The Public Health Need
Too much sodium can raise blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke and which disproportionately impacts racial and ethnic minority groups in this country. Strong scientific evidence supports the public health benefits associated with reduced sodium intakes. Reducing sodium intake has the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and illnesses in the coming years.
Almost half of American adults and almost three in five non-Hispanic Black adults have high blood pressure. Additionally, about one in 10 children and one in 8 teens has elevated or high blood pressure. Studies suggest that the preference for sodium is affected by early life consumption habits and can extend into adult years, although palates can also adjust to lower sodium in foods.
The sodium reduction targets are intended to address the excessive intake of sodium in the U.S.—which is currently on average almost 50 percent more than the recommended limit. Ninety percent of Americans are eating more sodium than is recommended. Average sodium intake in the U.S. is approximately 3,400 milligrams/day, while the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025 advises individuals 14 years and older to limit their consumption to 2,300 milligrams/day.
The FDA’s efforts to help reduce sodium intake is consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025.
Population Exceeding Recommended Sodium Limit
Americans consume more sodium than is recommended. The following are average daily intakes by age, relative to recommended limits.
Lowering Sodium in the Food Supply
The majority of sodium people in the U.S. consume, more than 70 percent, comes from processed, packaged and prepared foods, not from table salt added to food when cooking or eating at home. This makes it very difficult to control how much sodium we consume. Lowering the sodium content of the food supply supports increased food choice for consumers seeking a diverse diet that is consistent with recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Some companies have reduced sodium in certain foods, but many foods continue to contribute to high sodium intake, especially processed, packaged and prepared foods, including foods eaten away from home.
Sodium is added to processed, packaged and prepared foods for a wide variety of reasons. For example, it is used to control microbial growth, which can cause food to spoil and can cause foodborne illness. While sodium is necessary for many reasons, today’s food supply contains too much sodium.
Americans eat about one-third of their food calories and spend more than half of their food dollars outside the home, so it’s important that restaurants are part of the solution, along with the rest of the food industry. Including restaurant foods and food service is necessary to achieve sodium reduction goals and for people’s taste buds to adapt whether they are eating at home or outside the home.
- To help reduce sodium across the food supply, the FDA is taking an iterative, step-wise approach that includes establishing voluntary sodium targets for industry, monitoring and evaluating progress, and engaging with stakeholders.
- The FDA supports gradual progress to allow time for product reformulation and for consumer tastes to adjust. We know that people usually don’t notice small reductions (about 10 percent) in sodium. And, over time, people’s taste buds get used to these changes, especially if they are made gradually.
- A key part of the FDA’s sodium reduction plan is to monitor progress toward our goals on a regular basis to understand changes that are occurring. We work with other government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on these monitoring efforts. The FDA also actively engages with food manufacturers to learn about their sodium reduction efforts.
Progress in Reducing Sodium
- FDA has assessed packaged food label, sales and restaurant menu data from 2022 using the same methods outlined in the 2021 final guidance.
- Data from 2022 show that about 40% of the targets set for foods in the 2021 guidance, including restaurant categories, had already been reached, or were very close (within 10%). This is based on data comparing 2010, the baseline year used for the Phase I targets, and 2022, the most recent year for which data were available. More data will become available later to assess the full time covered by the Phase I targets (through April 2024).
- Going forward, the FDA intends to conduct an assessment of progress on sodium reduction relative to the targets about every three years, using information from packaged food labels, sales and restaurant menu data.
Source: https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/sodium-reduction-food-supply
