Campbell Soup Drops the Salt Scare Fanatics

Meanwhile, other restaurants, in anticipation of potential regulation on sodium use by fast-food chains, more and more restaurants and companies are trying to reduce their salt use without telling customers, reports the Chicago Tribune. This way, they could skirt government backlash without turning off halophilic customers. The hope is that customers can't actually taste the difference between low- and high-sodium foods. Campbell's problem, in this frame of mind, was that customers had been prompted by advertising to expect bland, low-sodium taste, so that's what they really tasted. Without the prompting, they may not notice they're eating healthier food. Given that none of the conflicting studies have found many benefits to high-salt diets, that's probably a good thing

It’s enraged dieticians and delighted the Salt Institute. But Campbell Soup’s high-profile u-turn on sodium raises some difficult questions about reformulation for all stakeholders.

Reduced sodium is not a killer USP for most consumers
In case you missed the howls of outrage that immediately followed, after an “unsparing analysis” of “strategies that are working and not working”, Campbell has resolved to boldly go back - to almost where it was before - and add some salt back into its Select Harvest soups.

Predictably, dieticians are not happy and lobby groups have accused bosses of taking the easy way out.

After all, points out the Center for Science in the Public Interest, there are plenty of ways to compensate for reduced sodium, from salt replacers and enhancers to extra herbs, spices, veg or other ingredients, provided you are prepared to pay for them.

Where the business case?

But is Campbell really sacrificing consumers’ health to preserve its bottom line, or is it just saying publically what many firms are saying privately, that while we say we want products with less fat, salt and sugar, we don’t always put our money where our month is?

As Paul Newberry, co-founder of UK-based fruit snack maker Stream Foods pointed out at a conference run by our sister title FoodManufacture.co.uk last year, coming up with products that impress angry dieticians is one thing, getting consumers to buy them is another.

“At one time, I was seduced by nutritionists saying I should be doing this or that and I launched 100% fruit desserts with vitamin C. They got into Sainsbury and Tesco, and they met all the nutritional criteria, but nobody bought them and they were delisted. I lost £200,000 but it taught me a lesson: my job is to make products that sell."

And as Campbell's incumbent chief executive Denise Morrison made very clear in her frank analysis of the soup market last week, sodium reduction is not a killer USP for many consumers, whether we like it or not.

Reformulation by stealth

Indeed, many firms have chosen to conduct their costly and technically challenging sodium reduction work ‘by stealth’ rather than shouting about it on pack precisely because telling consumers what they are up to does not sell more products, and may even have the opposite effect.

Firms trying to reduce saturated fat face similar problems, with claims to this effect proving a selling point for consumers on some products, but by no means on all.

The bottom line is that cutting salt, fat and sugar is expensive and difficult, and while manufacturers are facing intense pressure from politicians, health lobbyists and NGOs to get on with it, making a business case, particularly on high-volume, low margin products, is not easy.

Healthy flak

Another aspect to this debate that is often overlooked is that some companies are doing a lot (no one can accuse Campbell for not trying) and others are doing nothing – because they can.

Big brands get all the flak – perhaps rightly so – while many smaller players slip under the radar and continue to produce eye-wateringly salty, fatty and sugary wares without a whiff of bad publicity.

However, the roll out of front-of-pack labelling – which will highlight products’ sodium, saturated fat and added sugar content – will go some way to address this issue by helping consumers make comparisons between products, although the precise scope of these labels is the subject of heated debate.

Chickens, eggs and compromise

So where does all this leave us? And was Campbell right to reach for the salt shaker?

I’ll give the last word to Lori Colman of marketing agency Colman Brohan Davis, who takes a pragmatic view.

“Packaged foods have been so laden with sodium for so long that consumers believe that’s what food tastes like … and when there isn’t as much sodium, they complain that food is bland. CPG companies have essentially ‘hooked’ people on the flavor and now use ‘people want flavor’ as a reason to keep it going.


“So, I get it [Campbell’s decision]. But I also think that an iconic brand like Campbell’s has missed a real leadership opportunity in consumer education. What if instead of delivering a massive dose of sodium to all, they could have added sodium education on the label? ‘Add ¼ tsp salt if you like your soup more salty. The maximum recommended level of sodium intake is 2300 mg per day. 1/4 tsp salt = 500 mg sodium..'

“Taking personal responsibility for your sodium intake is really hard because of our desire for convenience. But everyone can reach for the salt shaker.

Fool.

There is wisdom in what a fool says. Hawkeye is a complete ******* idiot. Almost everything he posts is contradictory, and he has no idea whatsoever about how the world works. I have never encountered such an arrogant fuckwit in my life.

Your first step was to provide evidence that the government has forced anyone to do anything with regard to salt in processed foods, which you have failed to do.

So, since you've got zero evidence that the government has forced any corporation to do anything about salt in processed foods, and since even if they had, you can still reach for the salt cellar when you eat any of those processed foods--this thread is just another of your typical, meaningless rants.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

-- Chicken Little

I'm not "rationalizing" anything. You have presented zero evidence that the government has forced anyone to do anything with regard to salt in processed foods

Why the current push in the States? The view of the Obama administration’s top public health expert and the solution he proposes may provide an insight into whether the nation’s health care in the future will be based upon opinion or evidence. According to an editorial in a March issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, says the problem is American’s food. He believes that it is laced with too much salt. Earlier as New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Frieden determined that if New Yorkers could not make the choice to lower salt intake on their own, he would make it for them. Dr. Frieden’s “low salt for all New Yorkers” legacy now threatens all Americans and by extension Canadians. Frieden is employing an approach he championed in New York where his office chose to use “public pressure …and publicity” rather than available science.

Why should we all be concerned? If a high-ranking public health expert cannot get the science surrounding the salt shaker correct, then one can only imagine where a country’s future health-care dollars will be spent, when the science is more complex. Frieden’s assumption underlying his plans first for New York and now the entire nation is simple — too simple! His policy hinges completely on whether reducing salt will lower the blood pressure of the majority of adults and thus reduce their risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes. This linear and simplistic reasoning ignores two critical flaws in the science.

The first relates to the established fact that only a minority of individuals’ blood pressure is sensitive to salt. For the majority, there is no change when salt is reduced and for some their blood pressure will go up. The latter is not a theoretical possibility. The past president of the International Society of Hypertension recently sounded a note of caution in an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Michael Alderman, citing data from peer-reviewed articles in the medical literature, documented that it is quite unclear whether reducing sodium intake improves health outcomes, has no effect or causes harm. As opposed to Dr. Frieden’s politically correct stance in his Annals editorial, which ignored this published evidence, Alderman called for “definitive data” and the rule of science over politics in setting national health-care policy, i.e. “rigorous, large-scale population-based randomized clinical trials.”

and that you can always reach for the salt cellar if you want more salt in your food. You continue to sedulously avoid discussing that last point because it makes a mockery of your Chicken Little claim about freedom

It is not established that people in government told "lies" or acted in bad faith. It is not established that anyone needs to be excused. The very fact that you've got this thread is evidence that: one, the pressure you allege doesn't work; two, you can buy the product you want with all your fictious effects from salt prior to you opening the can; and finally, that you are desparate to portray yourself as the noble crusader for freedom when no freedom of yours is being threatened.

Any can of "Cream of..." (mushroom, pea, celery, wood chunks, sneakers , etc) contains so much sodium polyphosphate (detergent) as emulsifiers , Im sure these soups are really high in sodium

Cream of chicken is 870

Chunky clam chowder is 889