This news story appeared today on CTV News...I think it's a great thing

Food industry urged to pinch sodium from products

Canadians need to break their addiction to sodium, says a panel of experts that released on Thursday its recommendations on how government and industry can do just that.

The Sodium Working Group released six general and 27 specific recommendations that call for manufacturers to voluntarily lower the sodium content of their products over time.

The aim is to lower people's average daily sodium intake by about a third, to 2,300 milligrams, by 2016. That's the figure considered to be the upper daily limit of sodium for most adults (1,500 milligrams is considered an adequate intake).

But most Canadians go well over that, averaging about 3,400 mg every day. Almost 80 per cent of the sodium in Canadians' diets coming from processed food.

In order to cut sodium by a third, the working group suggests:

• Health Canada track how much sodium restaurants and food companies voluntarily cut from their products;
• setting up an online mechanism for companies to commit to the sodium-reduction strategy;
• amending Canada's food-labelling system to make sodium levels more clear to consumers.

Research suggests that reducing the amount of dietary sodium to recommended levels could prevent premature deaths from heart disease and strokes in 30 to 40 Canadians a day -- saving roughly 11,000 to 15,000 lives a year.

Cutting those hospitalizations would save the health system $1.5 billion a year, Dr. Mary L'Abbe of Health Canada said.

Though the report was two years in the making, it's unclear whether health stakeholders will be pleased with the 25-member working group's recommendations.

The Canadian Stroke Network, for example, has long said that it's time for the federal government to step in and demand changes from food manufacturers, not allow the industry to regulate itself.

"Although voluntary action by the food industry may be the preferred option to initiate sodium reduction, its absence calls for governments to use their regulatory capacity to bring about change," the Canadian Stroke Network's Dr. Kevin Willis wrote in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last fall.