salt
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The salt (sodium) content material of processed meat and fish merchandise is so excessive within the US that it ranks second on this planet, finds a 5-country research revealed within the on-line journal BMJ Open.

China comes first, whereas the UK comes final within the general rankings. However salt ranges inside and between the nations studied different broadly, relying on the product and model, the findings present.

Excessive dietary salt consumption is a serious explanation for hypertension and the related dangers of cardiovascular and kidney ailments and loss of life. The World Well being Group (WHO) recommends a most salt consumption of 2000 mg/day. However the common international salt consumption in 2010 was round twice that.

The WHO has set a goal of a 30% international discount in salt consumption by 2025, and to gauge progress in opposition to this, centered on the salt content material of processed meat and fish merchandise in three developed and two creating nations: the UK; U.S.; Australia; China; and South Africa.

The 2017 UK salt discount targets had been used to evaluate the proportion of merchandise reaching the degrees throughout the 5 nations.

The 5 nations included on this research every have their very own methods to scale back dietary salt consumption and are a part of The Worldwide Community for Meals and Weight problems/noncommunicable ailments Analysis, Monitoring and Motion Help (INFORMAS), which goals to collate and monitor the dietary content material of processed meals worldwide.

Merchandise for the research had been sourced from main grocery store chains within the 5 nations, and the meals vitamin labels scanned to evaluate the salt (sodium) content material (mg/100 g).

In reference to the ‘visitors gentle‘ system adopted by the UK, salt (sodium) stage was outlined as low if beneath 120 mg/100g; medium if between 120 and 599 mg/100g; and excessive if above 600 mg/100 g.

Processed meat merchandise had been labeled as: meat alternate options; bacon; canned meat; frozen meat; meat burgers; salami and cured meats; sausages and sizzling canines; sliced meat; dried meat; pate and meat spreads; kebabs; ‘different’ meat merchandise; uncooked flavoured meats; complete hams and comparable merchandise; roast rooster; and uncooked unflavoured meats.

Processed fish merchandise had been categorised as: canned; chilled; frozen; and ‘different’.

A complete of 33,955 processed meat and fish product labels had been scanned, of which 7455 (22%) had been excluded due to lacking or duplicate info, leaving 26,500 (78%) merchandise for evaluation. The whole quantity ranged from 885 for the UK to 17,098 for the U.S..

General, China had the best salt stage (1050 mg/100 g) for all merchandise, rating it the nation with the saltiest merchandise for each meat (1066 mg/100 g) and fish merchandise (942 mg/100 g), adopted by the U.S., South Africa, Australia and the UK (432 mg/100 g).

However the common salt content material of meat merchandise was decrease in Australia (580 mg/100 g) than it was within the UK (590 mg/100 g). And important variations in salt content material had been evident amongst all of the subcategories and between nations.

For instance, the salt content material of roast rooster in China was 4.5 occasions that of the identical product within the UK (893 mg/100 g vs 197 mg/100 g); chilled fish in China was 4.5 occasions saltier than that of the U.S. (1744 mg/100 g vs 389 mg/100 g).

And the salt content material of pâté and meat spreads in China was round 4 occasions that of Australia (1916 mg/100 g vs 480 mg/100 g). But the salt content material of bacon, frozen meat, salami and cured meats, dried meat and frozen fish in China was the bottom of all of the 5 nations.

A considerable proportion of processed meat and fish merchandise fell into the purple and amber visitors gentle classes, with the best proportion of inexperienced gentle merchandise discovered within the UK, accounting for simply over 12.5% of all meat and fish merchandise.

However the general sodium content material of meat and fish merchandise in every nation was excessive, with solely 10% of the merchandise within the UK and U.S., and not more than 5% in China and South Africa, falling into the inexperienced gentle class.

The UK had the best proportion of merchandise attaining its personal 2017 salt discount targets, excluding bacon merchandise: simply 14% reached this goal. This compares with 28% within the U.S., 50% in Australia, 75% in South Africa, and 85% in China.

Primarily based on these findings, if consuming 100 g meat and fish merchandise each day, common sodium consumption would account for simply over 47% of the WHO advisable each day most in China and the U.S., 37% in South Africa, practically 35% in Australia, and 27% within the UK.

“It isn’t simple to easily substitute or reformulate the excessive sodium merchandise that exist already for years. Nonetheless, the big distinction in sodium content material of comparable merchandise in several nations, and the distinction in sodium content material amongst completely different manufacturers inside the similar nation, point out that there’s nonetheless loads of room for salt discount,” remark the researchers.

They acknowledge a number of limitations to their findings, together with that these are based mostly on purchases from chosen shops at one time limit. What’s extra, they did not seize meals buying information to quantify precise sodium consumption of processed meat and fish merchandise.

Third, information assortment spanned a number of years, from 2012 to 2018, throughout which era product reformulation could have occurred, they counsel.

However, they conclude: “The sodium content material of meat and fish merchandise in all the chosen nations was very excessive, with a 100 g serving measurement of meat and fish merchandise contributing to at least one half/ third of WHO advisable most each day sodium consumption.”


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Extra info:
Cross-sectional comparisons of sodium content material in processed meat and fish merchandise amongst 5 nations: potential for possible targets and reformulation, BMJ Open (2021). bmjopen.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10. … /bmjopen-2020-046412

Quotation:
US ranked world No 2 for salt content material of processed meat/fish merchandise (2021, October 18)
retrieved 18 October 2021
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2021-10-world-salt-content-meatfish-products.html

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