26 Jul 11: Usually, Indians are used to higher salt intake. And now, due to the lifestyle changes, people are now preferring more of ready-to-eat packaged foods, which also have high amounts of sodium. But, the medical researches have proved that higher salt intake will lead to severe health related problems such as developing kidney stones, hypertension, heart strokes, etc.
In view of these problems, National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) has recently instructed that the daily salt intake of an individual should be reduced from 8gm to 6gm per day. In addition to this, the Indian Council of Medical research (ICMR) has decided that the salt content used in the packaged foods has to be considerably reduced. The same has also been communicated with the packaged food manufacturers.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) too has decided upon the same and is considering various measures to let the food manufacturers successfully implement this measure. The FSSAI has opined that reducing the salt content in packaged foods will result less taste that in turn results in drop of their sales which will affect the manufacturers, hence the authority has suggested that the manufacturers can reduce the sodium content in salt instead, thus maintaining the same taste with reduction in salt intake.
The FSSAI is also planning to make it mandatory for the food manufacturers to display the sodium content on the pack.
Apart from the above measures, NIN in its manual ‘dietary guidelines for Indians’ has mentioned the need for finding alternatives for salt. ICMR and FSSAI too wants the researchers to come out with healthy salt alternative very soon which will be a better idea to make the people of India to overcome the excess usage of salt in their diet.
Source: The Times of India