CSPI Report Critical of Salt Content in Canadian Packaged Foods, Restaurants
The Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI Canada) has issued a report claiming that excess sodium “likely kills more Canadians every year than any other chemical substance” added to food. Titled “Salty to a Fault: Varied Sodium Levels Show Lowering Salt in Processed Foods IS Feasible,” the report surveyed 318 foods and purportedly found that a majority of Canadian restaurants and perhaps most packaged foods sold in grocery stores contain unhealthy and unnecessarily high levels of sodium. It calls on Health Canada to set category-by-category sodium-reduction targets for foods, alleging that “salt remains largely untouched by food safety laws and is grossly underestimated as a public health risk by government officials who generally direct much more attention to substances that pose rare or more acute risks.”
The report apparently found varying degrees of sodium among groups of comparable foods, citing as an example two restaurant french fry orders ranging from a low of 40 milligrams (which left salting to the customer) to a high of 555 milligrams in a standardized serving. “Our scan makes it clear that many companies can and do make foods with much less added salt than their competitors, despite claims they must use lots to make dough rise, preserve food, and give foods acceptable taste and texture,” a CSPI official said. “The wide variation in sodium levels in most of the 49 categories of foods featured in the CSPI report helps explain how so many Canadians consume double or triple the 1,500 milligrams of sodium accepted by most experts as an appropriate adult target for consumption.” See CSPI (Canada) Press Release, September 23, 2009.
