this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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The agency wants to lower how much salt we consume over the next three years to an average of 2,750 milligrams per day. That's still above the recommended limit of 2,300 mg.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday laid out fresh goals to cut sodium levels in packaged and processed foods  by about 20%, after its prior efforts to address a growing epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases showed early signs of success.

The FDA in October 2021 had set guidelines to trim sodium levels in foods ranging from potato chips to hamburgers in a bid to prevent excessive intake of salt that can trigger high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

The agency is now seeking voluntary curbs from packaged-food makers such as PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Campbell Soup. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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[–] [email protected] 150 points 3 months ago (13 children)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (35 children)

a former coworker sat and tried to convince me that sugar is neither bad for you nor addictive. the sugar lobby psychological manipulation propaganda machine is the behemoth that has to be dismantled before any meaningful change can even be attempted

this coworker was an instructional academic librarian who included confirmation bias and how to avoid it in her teaching

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago

Agreed, corn syrup shouldn't be added to almost all food on the taxpayers' dime.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

Cut sugar by 75% and we're getting somewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago (3 children)

How about 50%. Also do sugar and probably saturated fat. Also ban high fructose corn syrup.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

ban high fructose corn syrup.

Won't happen as long as the corn subsidies are in place. Corn is literally everywhere and the US is probably #1 in the world in terms of converting corn into things that aren't corn.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And some dyes, bread additives, BVO, etc. commercial food processing in the US is a bit of a mess.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Also also, can we revisit nutritional information on the packages? Make the serving sizes more easy to understand to humans, I'm not measuring out cups, ounces, or grams of food. Every container should have a label, even if it came in a bigger package. Sweeteners should be combined into parentheses too so the ingredients don't look like "water, flour, glucose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, high fructose corn syrup, sugar" (now with less sugar!)

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I feel like I recall a story about a chip company that slowly reduced their salt content by like 50% over a number of years and literally no one noticed or complained.

I definitely saw another story about how they were researching pyramid-shaped salt crystals because they have higher surface area to volume, and with cuboid salt you wind up swallowing it before the whole thing even dissolves, so you're not even getting a theoretical flavor experience, it's just going straight into your gut.

We eat too much salt. It's absurd.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Salt is not an issue if you're healthy and drink enough water. Our problem is we're not healthy and don't drink enough water...we eat chips and drink coke with it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'd caveat it's not unhealthy if you sweat a lot, drink lots of water, AND consume a level of dietary potassium 2x that of your sodium intake, which pretty much nobody is. (and disclaimer I'm no doctor).

Sodium and potassium work together with opposite functions via the sodium-potassium pump. Too much salt leads to water retention within cells. That's the best case scenario so long as you're drinking lots of water. Too much salt absent of potassium will send blood pressure up due to vasoconstriction.

Potassium helps the body regulate fluid retention and helps to concentrate urine while helping with vasodilation of blood vessels (among many other important functions).

Just learning all this as I've taken a deep-dive on this stuff for my own health as well as my mom's.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I’ve read this a lot but have no idea how to increase potassium. There’s only so many bananas you can eat and clearly one every day is not enough

Even if there’s a salt substitute with potassium, I’m not sure the point when there’s no problem with salt you intentionally add. Especially since I rarely do

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[–] AlecSadler 7 points 3 months ago

Can confirm, source: I eat ~7000mgs/day

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago

As someone who has always been on a low-sodium diet, but who nonetheless has a hankering for processed food, thank fuck.

Everything has become so ridiculously salty, if you aren’t already used to the salt, that it’s largely inedible. It would otherwise be really good, but holy shit.

If we can get people consuming less salt in some places, they will want less in other places as well, maybe food as a whole will be less salty.. that would be a win in every single way for everyone. Everyone who regularly eats with me tends to want less salt in their food overall as a result, so I know it works, and it doesn’t even take that long.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I like chips and guac, but every time I go to the store and the low sodium chips are out of stock...I don't buy chips.

Once you get used to it the regular ones are disgustingly salty.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I grew up in a low salt household and now I'm extremely sensitive to salts, so most chips are a no-go for me

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

great hopefully next they reduce plastic by 100%

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

or at least ban things like styrofoam

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They'll up the chloride content by 40% to compensate, though.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Unironically, yes. A common substitute for table salt (sodium chloride NaCl) is potassium salt (potassium chloride KCl).

The good news is that the health problems with table salt is the sodium, not the chloride. Potassium actually has the opposite effect on the body, so a higher potassium intake would actually help treat a high sodium intake.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Fun fact: potassium chloride is what the United States has primarily used in lethal injection which has been used to execute 1400 people since 1976.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm absolutely going to hear some Karen later repeat this fact as a reason to protest against 'government crackdowns on salt' or something, aren't I?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

"Swimming pools are bad! They're full of water, which LESBIAN TERRORISTS use to DROWN CHRISTIANS!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

They are killing our roads!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I bet they just put 20% less food in the package.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's especially bad, in my experience, with plant-based foods that they're trying to make taste like meat.

I had the Impossible Whopper once... it was almost like eating a soft block of salt.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Plant based meats are bassically the definition of highly processed food.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No, not my salt and vinegar kettle chips! 😭

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Too bad, they're vinegar and salt now!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Sea salt flavor is now just sea flavor.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Is this going to turn into conservatives freaking out and just eating salt shakers to prove how not-woke they are?

It's really annoying how every attempt to make things better seems to be met with "fuck you I refuse to acknowledge anything beyond my short term comfort"

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The risks of sodium aren't universal (some people appear to have immunity), and were exaggerated by the sugar industry.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Homing in on a single number at a time is like plugging one leak and having another spring up. The laser focus on reducing fat, for example, led to foods using more salt and sugar to compensate and that created other problems. We need a more holistic approach to diet.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Who cares about sodium, can we get rid of high fructose corn syrup? I mean reducing sodium sounds good, but it's not even on the same playing field

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

It’s not just the chips that are the problem (although many brands are so salty they burn my mouth) , everyone knows they’re salted.

Hopefully this includes the chicken nuggets and other prepared foods that not everyone realizes are high in sodium

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I was frustrated by the lack of low sodium options in processed foods before I cut them out entirely.

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