Study reviews salt reduction strategies for food manufacturers

A new scientific review has looked at a range of sodium reduction strategies that can be taken by food producers to reduce the amount of salt in foods.

Generally humans enjoy the taste of sodium — so much so that most people will easily (and accidentally) eat more than the recommended amount of it each day. Eating too much sodium can be associated with high blood pressure, hypertension and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, and just three slices of bread is all it takes to reach the daily recommended amount.

Aubrey Dunteman and Soo-Yeun Lee, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign, conducted a comprehensive review of sodium reduction strategies in food production. The scoping review looked at the results of hundreds of scientific studies, literature reviews, book chapters and patents to analyse the different methods of reducing salt in foods. It focused on studies that included sensory data with human subjects, because palatability is essential for consumer acceptance.

“In this review, we looked at different food systems. The way you would reduce salt in a solid system, like a topical application on snack foods, such as salted peanuts or salted chips, would be very different from embedded application in semi-solid foods like cheese or bread. And in a liquid system like soup, where it is completely dissolved, it would be really different in the way we could reduce salt yet provide the palatability it gives,” Lee stated.

“We’re hoping this work will provide insight into the wide variety of salt-reducing technologies that exist. This can help food companies be more informed to use different strategies than what they have been doing,” she added.

Five main strategies were identified in this process: salt reduction, salt replacers, flavour modification, physical modification and functional modification.

Some of these are fairly obvious, such as replacing salt with different ingredients or simply reducing the amount used, but the others are less straightforward for manufacturers.

It is not possible for manufacturers to simply remove salt from some products as it often serves as a functional ingredient, not just as a flavour booster. For instance, it is difficult to make bread or cured meats without the use of sodium, where it is needed for leavening or preservation.

Many studies used salt replacers such as potassium chloride, calcium chloride, or other chloride or acid salts. However, these substitutes tend to have a bitter taste, so they are often used in combination with flavour modifications, such as umami substances or bitter blockers.

“Another method is physical modification. For example, you can encapsulate the salt crystals, which changes how the salt is dissolved in the mouth. This can alter the saltiness perception allowing for a reduction in the amount of sodium necessary to create the salty taste. You can also create an uneven distribution of the salt in a product that can further help enhance the perceived saltiness of the food product through taste contrast,” Dunteman explained.

“Finally, there is functional modification. For example, you could move away from a sodium-based preservative in cured meats, perhaps using a celery-powder preservative instead of sodium nitrate.”

Functional modification is less represented in the scoping review because this type of sodium reduction research typically does not incorporate a sensory component as a main assessment method, Dunteman noted.

The findings were published in the Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety journal.

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