It is commonly known that high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney failure are on the table for anyone consuming too much salt/sodium. Through a federal program called the Sodium Working Group, there are efforts in Canada to cause domestic food companies to lower sodium levels in their products voluntarily.
However the attempt has not inspired confidence in Canadian provincial health ministers as at their meeting in Newfoundland in September of 2010 they announced that they would be enacting regulations to make a reduction in the sodium levels in food the law. The national Sodium Working Group has been looking to move daily average consumption of sodium down from 3,400 mg. to 2,300 by 2016; a low sodium diet is considered even lower, closer to 1500 mg. per day.
B.C. Health Minister Kevin Falcon: Lowering Sodium
Most of the sodium Canadians consume does not come from the salt shaker but rather from processed food and restaurant food. Sodium and salt are in fact not interchangeable; sodium is the part of salt that is harmful. It is the levels of sodium in frozen foods, canned goods and fast foods that the country's health ministers would like to see reduced.
“We will accept the voluntary targets but we want them backstopped by a regulatory mechanism that will kick in should industry fail to meet the voluntary targets,” B.C.'s health minister Kevin Falcon told the Vancouver Sun on Monday. "We don’t quibble with the targets that have been set, but we do have real concerns about the voluntary approach primarily because it has failed virtually everywhere it’s been tried.”
Canadian Medical Association Journal Writes of Lower Salt/Sodium Levels
The Canadian Medical Association Journal writes about salt reduction in a story they first released in August of 2010. In that editorial they spoke with people involved in efforts to have salt-levels reduced who said food companies emphasize obstacles that they say are not valid.
"Food companies will continue to say they can’t reduce the salt in their products and will emphasize the technical obstacles to reducing salt but the truth is they can do it quite easily and have done it in the UK and other countries," Katharine Jenner of the international advocacy group World Action on Salt and Health. "There turned out to be very, very few technical reasons why salt couldn’t be reduced (in the UK) outside some specific product categories like cheese."
There was to be a meeting with the provincial health ministers and federal Health Minister Leona Aqlukkaq late Monday and Falcon said the provincial ministers would recommend their approach, to enact regulations to make certain food companies comply, to Aqlukkaq with "...a very unified voice."
Sources:
Fowlie, Jonathan and Woo, Andrea; 'Health ministers to cook up new rules on salt levels in food'; September 13 2010, accessed Sept. 13; The Vancouver Sun
Lopez, Eve; 'Low Sodium Diet Tips'; March 18 2010, accessed Sept. 13; Suite 101
Vogel, Lauren; 'Voluntary sodium reductions far from "uncharted"'; published August 9 2010, accessed Sept. 13; Canadian Medial Association Journal
Join the Conversation