Do you think food companies are making a genuine effort to lower the sodium content in foods? Are you making an effort to lower sodium content in your diet?!

This week there were two sodium related announcements in the news, and I was reminded of my resolution to seriously lower my sodium intake this year. Campbell Soup Co. announced that it has 12 newly reformulated Campbell's Kids Soups, which now contain 480 milligrams of sodium per serving - which is still 20% of the recommended daily amount. Also, the Grocery Manufacturers Association released a new paper in it's Science Policy Paper Series: Sodium and Salt: A Guide for Consumers, Policymakers and the Media.

I decided to search for the current Dietary Guideline for Americans (2005) and it was NOT what I thought it was. First off, food labels go off a general sodium daily value of 2400 mg. But the REAL guideline for Sodium in the American diet recommends that:

Individuals with hypertension, blacks, middle-aged and older adults should aim to consume no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day. This means that for this high risk group (and I fall into this category), we should basically MULTIPLY the number on food labels by 1.6. For the rest of the population, you should consume less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) of sodium a day. This is about 1 teaspoon of table salt per day.

For the higher risk population of blacks, middle-aged and older adults, an easy way to figure out just how much of our daily sodium a food actually provides, is to add back half of the number on the label. So if a food product, for example Lean Cuisine Chicken Ranch Club Flatbread Melt says the daily value is 26% for sodium, this means that we are ACTUALLY consuming closer to 40% of our sodium allowance.

If you haven't been very careful about watching your sodium intake, and especially if you're in one of the groups mentioned above, then let's get more vigilant about reducing the amount of sodium that we consume.

Below are the labeling guidelines for Sodium set by the FDA for food products:

• * Sodium-free: less than 5 milligrams of sodium per serving.
• * Very low-sodium: 35 milligrams or less per serving.
• * Low-sodium: 140 milligrams or less per serving.
• * Reduced sodium: usual sodium level is reduced by 25 percent.
• * Unsalted, no salt added or without added salt: made without the salt that's normally used, but still contains the sodium that's a natural part of the food itself.

• The FDA and USDA state that an individual food that has the claim "healthy" must not exceed 480 mg sodium per reference amount. "Meal type" products must not exceed 600 mg sodium per labeled serving size.

Photo Credit: TooFarNorth/ Flickr