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upstart writes:

Sweeping FDA guidance would drastically cut salt in American foods:

The Food and Drug Administration is asking food manufacturers and restaurants to cut the salt in their products over the coming 2½ years, hoping to reduce Americans' overall sodium intake by 12 percent.

The sweeping recommendation, announced Wednesday, is expected to cover a wide variety of foods — from chain restaurant meals to processed food on grocery store shelves and even baby food.

"What we'd like to see is the food industry gradually lower the sodium content" in the most common foods, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner, told NBC News.

The goal, Woodcock said, is to slash rates of heart disease, the country's No. 1 killer. Reducing sodium in the diet ultimately "would have a major impact on hypertension, heart disease and stroke," she said.

Current dietary guidelines recommend that adults consume no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. That equates to about one teaspoon of table salt.

But the average person in the U.S. consumes about 3,400 mg of sodium a day,according to the FDA. The majority of that comes from processed foods, not table salt.

"We recognize that cutting down on sodium in your diet is hard to do on your own, because about 70 percent of the sodium we eat comes from processed, packaged and prepared foods," Susan Mayne, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition said on a media call Wednesday.

The new recommendations aim to cut the average salt intake by 12 percent, down to 3,000 mg a day, Woodcock said. That is the equivalent of consuming 60 fewer teaspoons of salt a year.

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