More Americans Buying Low-Sodium Foods
More Americans Buying Low-Sodium Foods – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently looked at the results of a survey on what kind of food products Americans are buying and found that almost a third of those surveyed said they purchase products labeled low-sodium or reduced-sodium.
Salt can increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, and nutritionists point out that the main culprit at the dinner table is not the salt shaker but packaged and restaurant foods.
The CDC team looked at survey data from 2010 from 3,700 adults and found the results encouraging. The team found that more than 50% of those surveyed knew how to track salt content from food and nutrition labels; only 20% reported they were confused about how to figure out the salt content in foods. Nearly 50% of participants said they regularly checked nutrition labels for sodium to reduce their intake of sodium.
Almost one-third of shoppers specifically looked for and bought foods labeled as low-sodium or reduced sodium. Experts say that manufacturers can meet this demand for low-sodium foods by producing more of such products, and providing better labeling to enable consumers to eat healthy.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendations for daily salt intake for adults is about 1 teaspoon or 2,000 milligrams.
The report was published April 9 in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease.
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