Spilling over into healthy diets

IT USED TO be the city that never sleeps but of late New York has been making the headlines for its healthy habits.

First it cut trans fats out of foods, then it told restaurants and fast food joints to display calorie information. Now, again led prominently by city major Michael Bloomberg, New York is taking the lead in the US in cutting salt out of people’s diets.

The city’s salt-reduction initiative, unveiled last month, aims to reduce consumption of the substance by 25 per cent over five years. If targets are met by 2014, it says thousands of premature deaths can be averted.

Since the initiative is modelled on a salt-reduction programme in the UK, and our food authorities closely follow developments across the Irish Sea, it’s tempting to say we have nothing to learn from Bloomberg’s campaign.

After all, we have had our own salt-reduction programme, run by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) since 2003 in conjunction with industry. It claims significant progress, with manufacturers and retailers in reducing sodium content in many products.

In reality, though, our efforts to reduce the salt content in everyday foods are faltering just as New York is attacking the issue with energy and optimism. The number of companies participating in the Irish programme has dropped from 72 to 63 in a year and some still on the list are not active. So, fewer companies are making commitments and those that are, are making looser commitments.

Our intake of salt is declining, but not by much. The FSAI would like to see consumption cut to 6g a day, still well above the recommended daily intake of 4g, but accepts that this target will not be met by the deadline this year. Ibec, which represents the food industry, says salt content across all foods has dropped 7 per cent. Intake has fallen by a similar amount, from 8.58g in 2005 to 7.97g in 2007. When discretionary salt is added, average intake is more than 9.5g – about two full teaspoonfuls a day.

While the FSAI deserves credit for doggedly pursuing the issue with the food industry, it has soldiered alone. In New York, Bloomberg has been happy to lead from the front, but the Irish political establishment is notable for its absence from health campaigns. Is it any wonder that our efforts to cut salt consumption are struggling when there is no leadership on the issue?

A closer look at the targets set by the New York health authorities also shows that for some foods, these are lower than the equivalents in the Irish salt-reduction programme. The US initiative, for example, aims to reduce sodium levels in bread to 360mg/100g by 2014, compared with the FSAI’s 2012 target of 400mg/100g. The US target for cured meat is 810mg/100g, compared with 1,000mg/100g in Ireland.

With manufacturers on this side of the Atlantic claiming they cannot reduce salt levels further for technical reasons, it will be interesting to see how much progress Mayor Bloomberg’s officials make towards their targets.

The FSAI considered adopting UK targets last year but backed off after the food industry opposed the move. “We thought they would jump at having the same targets in both jurisdictions, given that so much of our food comes from Britain,” say Wayne Anderson, chief food science specialist with the FSAI. “What they actually wanted was no targets, anywhere.”

Anderson argues that there is no point in having targets that the food industry won’t agree to and says the benefits of targets are unproven. The UK, he points out, merely checks food labels rather than actually measuring salt content, as the FSAI does.

Even before Bloomberg’s announcement, moves to cut salt content internationally were gaining momentum. Julie Sloan, director of market research company Mintel Ireland, says salt reduction is gaining ground with manufacturers and governments. “The trend is an industry and government push rather than a consumer pull,” she says. “Consumers will be slow to adopt it.”

Sloan predicts the market for food products will split, with modest salt reductions in products aimed at mainstream consumers and more dramatic reductions in products for those with serious medical issues. Almost 30 per cent of US consumers have high blood pressure, she points out, and another 28 per cent have pre-hypertension.

Nestlé, for example, says it has reduced the salt content of its wholegrain cereals by 40 per cent since 1998 and believes further reductions are possible. “But we have to do it slowly and steadily; if we make big changes, the taste profile is altered and the product could be rejected by customers,” says country manager Alison Healy.

The role of salt in food manufacture goes far beyond taste. Lower salt food can be dearer to make, may spoil quicker and could look worse. When Nestlé reduced the salt content in Cheerios, for example, it ran into colour problems because the resulting product was pastier in appearance than the original. Sausages fall apart and bacon goes off quicker when salt is reduced too much, Anderson says.

Despite industry resistance and technical limitations, Anderson says the FSAI will keep “plugging away”.

In numbers:

9.5g

a day is the average salt intake

6g

of salt a day is the Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s target

FACTS: WITH A PINCH OF SALT

Bodies need salt to function, but too much salt raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Our kidneys do filter out salt but can’t handle the long-term effects of excessive intake.

Last month, researchers in the University of California estimated that shaving 3g off the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the US. In Irish terms, that amounts to almost 1,000 fewer strokes and more than 1,300 fewer deaths each year.

Telling people to use less salt has little effect because most of what they consume is contained in processed foods. Less than 20 per cent of intake is discretionary, via the salt cellar; the rest is in the foods we eat every day. Some don’t even taste salty. A bran muffin, for example, can have twice as much salt as a bag of crisps.

“Because we don’t actively choose the salt in our diets, even health-conscious people tend to consume more than they mean to,” says New York City health commissioner Dr Thomas Farley.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) admits targets for lower salt intake won’t be reached, which it blames on our fondness for certain types of food. “It won’t happen until Irish people change their eating habits,” says the FSAI’s chief food specialist, Wayne Anderson. “If people continue to eat as much cured meat and bread as they do now, there’s no way we’ll get there.”