Sodium Content in Cereal-Based Products Sold in Italy: How Far Are We from the Global Benchmarks?

ABSTRACT: Reformulation of food products is one of the measures needed for reducing salt consumption. Accordingly, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently proposed global sodium benchmarks for different food categories to be used for setting national policies. Therefore, the sodium content of cereal-based products currently sold in Italy was compared with the WHO benchmarks, highlighting those categories primarily needing a reformulation. To this aim, the sodium content and several declarations (i.e., nutrition and health claims, organic or gluten free declaration) were retrieved from 2917 cereal-based products sold on the Italian market. All "minimally processed breakfast cereals" had a sodium content below the benchmark, while "flatbreads" and "leavened bread" had the highest percentage of it

SUBMITTER: Martini D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9370200 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature