China's First Sodium Reduction Proposal for Food Industry
Food Safety News
2018-04-19
CDC
The China Center of Disease Control （CDC）and Nutrition and the China Nutrition Society co-sponsored a seminar on "Guidelines for Sodium Reduction in the Chinese Food Industry." Experts said that at present more than half of the countries in the world have launched national guidelines or actions to reduce sodium, and sodium reduction has become the consensus of the world to control chronic diseases. China also introduced the "Guide to Sodium Reduction" for the first time, striving to reduce the nation's per capita sodium intake by 20% by 2030.
The current "Guideline for Sodium Reduction in China's Food Industry" suggests that food companies, as practitioners of sodium reduction work, should follow the principle of gradual, step-by-step, and key breakthroughs strategies. The goal is to gradually reduce the average sodium content of processed foods by 20% by 2030. Food enterprises can refer to the average level and distribution of sodium content of similar foods, and reduce the amount of sodium salt through various technologies such as improving the technology and taste adjustment to achieve the goal of reducing the sodium consumption in the industry as a whole.
China is one of the countries with the highest intake of salt in the world. Despite years of publicity and education on sodium reduction, the per capita sodium intake is still as high as 10.5 grams per day. With the rapid development of the food industry, more and more processed foods have been shopped, and the source of salt has shifted from household cooking salt to processed foods. Experts said that although the active participation and practice of the food industry is the key to the success or failure of salt reduction work, the substantial progress can still be achieved through joint efforts and support from the entire society.
