Effort will focus on sodium content of processed foods.
The FDA intends to launch an effort that would reduce the amount of salt contained in processed foods. The announcement follows the release of a study by the Institute of Medicine that concludes that consumer education efforts and attempts to get manufacturers to voluntarily reduce the amount of salt in their products have failed to achieve the desired reductions in sodium consumption. Excessive sodium consumption has been linked to hypertension and heart disease in some studies. The FDA effort will take a number of years as regulators work with industry to gradually condition Americans' palates to less salt in their food by incrementally decreasing the amount of salt permitted in processed foods.