6533b7dafe1ef96bd126df6d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Current and future strategies to reduce salt consumption

subject

description

Abstract The development of healthier lifestyles is of great importance in modern societies. Due to the increasingly sedentarism of population, our current diets need to be adapted to reduce the consumption of salt, fats, and sugar to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases, among others. For example, salt consumption is increasing considerably worldwide, which has been accompanied by the increased rates of heart disease incidence, mainly in developed countries. The food industry is making considerable efforts to provide lower salt food with similar taste, texture, and shelf-life as conventional food to promote not only healthier consumption practices, but also to answer the raising awareness of consumers for better and healthier products. Replacing food ingredients with natural extracts, spices, algae, or halophyte plants is one of the strategies being employed in order to reduce salt consumption and its addition in foods. The main strategies used to reduce salt consumption rely of alternative salts such as potassium chloride, the use spices or, more recently, encapsulated salts that increase the salty taste at lower salt concentrations. Other possible replacers of salt have been investigated, and one of the most interesting approaches is the use of the halophyte plant glasswort (Salicornia ramosissima) that grows in saline environments. Other strategies to replace salt and sodium-based additives as food preservants rely on the use of nonthermal emergent processing technologies for microbial inactivation, such as high-pressure processing, pulsed electric field, and ultrasound, which have been used to reduce the amounts of salt in meat products without compromising food quality and safety. This chapter focus on the main strategies being employed to reduce salt consumption and the main replacers being used, as well as discussing health implications and recommendations by the official authorities for a healthier diet.