by Michael Moss
While some scientists quibbled with these numbers, Cargill began telling its customers that it accepted the basic premise that too much salt was bad for you. One Cargill official who regularly makes presentations to the company’s customers, Kristen Dammann, took me through her current deck of PowerPoint slides, saying, “Excessive intake has been linked to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease. So the idea is that reducing sodium can reduce the risk for hypertension and the risk for heart disease.”
As if this wasn’t enough—having salt linked to heart attacks by the biggest seller of salt—Cargill had more bad news for its food industry customers. In England, government authorities were not just setting vague overall limits on sodium or dithering around with the saltshaker, like the American authorities did back in the 1980s. The British knew well that most of the salt in everyone’s diet came from the food industry, so starting in 2003, the Food Standards Agency in London developed a scheme to hold the manufacturers accountable. It set targets for how much sodium they could add to their products—crafting limits for dozens of foods, from bread to cookies to frozen meals. The system was voluntary, but the authorities pressed the industry to meet these targets, and, for companies who were used to heaping as much salt into their products as they wanted, the details were alarming. Soups had to lose 30 percent of their salt, breads 16 percent, meats 10 percent, and so on.
Many of these foods were being made by companies based in the United States, where consumer advocates were turning up the pressure on salt. In 2005, the Center for Science in the Public Interest came out with a damning report entitled “Salt: The Forgotten Killer … and FDA’s Failure to Protect the Public’s Health.” The consumer group had been skeptical when the FDA in 1983 asked manufacturers—in gentle tones—to go easy on the salt. So starting that year, the group began tracking 100 brand-name products, such as Campbell’s soups and Kraft’s Lunchables, and it found little change in their salt loads. From 1983 to 2003, the salt levels dipped by 5 percent, but since 1993—in the absence of any attention from Washington—these products had actually become saltier, gaining 6 percent by 2003. “Despite pleas from government and other health experts over the last quarter century to reduce salt consumption, Americans are consuming more—not less—salt,” the report said. “Thousands of packaged foods provide one-fourth or more of a day’s maximum recommended intake.”
All in all, the food industry was facing trouble with salt that made the public’s addiction look mild. Consumers might find themselves acting like some hapless junkie when they first try to cut back on their consumption of salt, but at least we know that they, in time, can get their taste buds back to normal and that these cravings will, in turn, subside. What companies face, on the other hand, is a much harsher mistress. The mere suggestion that they might cut back on salt causes them to panic, and it is not the saltshaker they reach for. They lunge for the salt that arrives at their factories in fifty- and eighty-pound sacks, piled to the ceiling on wooden pallets.
Without salt, processed food companies cease to exist.
Which is where Cargill comes in, with the full force of its service-oriented mission. It hired some smart research scientists, bought them a $750,000 scanning electron microscope and other sophisticated equipment, and put them to work finding ways to reduce the industry’s dependence on sodium. To see the fruits of their efforts firsthand, I left the company’s office complex where cubicle workers sell salt and visited a nearby facility where the focal point was a large, industrial kitchen, its windows heavily shuttered to keep industrial spies at bay. In the ovens here, one of Cargill’s technicians, Jody Mattsen, had baked me some loaves of white bread. She had them sliced and placed on trays for us to taste.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Hey, let’s just take the salt out,’ ” she said. “You know, that’s contributing the sodium, so let’s just take it out. So here is an example on that end of the spectrum.” She offered me a slice. “Basically, this is a bread with no salt added.”
We ate. We gagged. The bread tasted like tin. Without salt, it didn’t even look like the puffy, light bread you buy in the grocery store. It was riddled with big air pockets and had a rough texture, and the loaf’s normally burnished brown crust had faded to a wan, sickly tan.
Then she slid a piece toward me that, she said, contained the solution Cargill is now offering its customers. This loaf looked fine and tasted fine, and yet it had 33 percent less sodium than normal bread. Cargill’s trick was to replace some of the salt with a chemical compound known as potassium chloride.
White and crystalline, potassium chloride looks and feels a lot like salt, but far more importantly, it acts much like salt, chemically speaking. “It’s the closest thing currently that we have of something that functions like salt,” Mattsen said. “You remember the periodic table from school? Well, on that chart, potassium, with the symbol K, is right below sodium, Na, which means it has similar properties.” The chloride part of potassium chloride, she added, is the same chloride in salt, whose chemical name is sodium chloride.
For the purposes of processed food, potassium chloride was basically salt but without the bad sodium. Same salty taste, but no heart attacks or strokes. Intrigued, I began to question my unscientific efforts to compare the pillars of processed foods to drugs of abuse. Yes, salt might be compared to cocaine, for all the pleasure and longing that both provide, but this salt substitute was something else altogether. It wasn’t a drug as much as it was a cure. Maybe this was the methadone for an industry hooked on salt. Something to ease the pain of the companies trying to break their habit on salt—without hurting their sales.
This seemed to be a win-win for everybody. Consumers would get less sodium, food manufacturers would stay in business, and Cargill could make up for the dwindling salt market by selling potassium chloride—which it now does, in a brand called Premier. Just like salt, it comes in multiple grades and 1,800-pound pallets, but there is an added bonus for Cargill: The potassium chloride is priced much higher than salt.
To promote potassium chloride, Cargill has even produced a handy instructional flyer for companies that are serious about getting off salt, which it calls the “the 10-step guide.” Its advice ranges from urging these companies to know their competition, to figuring out whether to tell consumers about their efforts to cut back on salt. “Do you decide to make a health claim? Do you mention the reduction at all? Or, do you keep it stealth? The answer will depend on what your identified objectives are, who you are trying to reach and what your testing efforts are telling you,” the guide says. “We offer a full portfolio of salt alternatives to meet your needs, while still delivering the same great salty taste your customers crave.”
As for the higher cost of potassium chloride, Cargill notes that this and other costs associated with creating healthier foods can be passed on to the consumer: “Options such as potassium chloride and alternative flavor systems are more expensive, so understanding your target consumer and their willingness to pay more for a reduced sodium product will help you weigh the pros and cons.”
Alas, the potassium chloride solution does pose some significant problems for food companies, as does getting off salt more generally. For one thing, potassium chloride can be quite bitter, which can ruin a product’s taste. Some ingredient companies have begun marketing yet more food additives, specifically designed to mask the bitter taste of the added potassium chloride. For another thing, swapping potassium chloride for salt also messes up the intricate formulas engineered by food technicians, throwing other ingredients—including sugar and fat—out of whack. Most commonly, their strength is diminished, forcing technicians to add more sugar and fat to maintain their allure.
The British, so far ahead of American regulators when it comes to salt, have sought to discourage manufacturers from using potassium chloride at all. They point to research that links large amounts of potassium to kidney problems and claim that kids and the elderly may face th
e highest risk. More broadly, they worry that potassium chloride will undermine their strategy of lowering the country’s intake of sodium—a strategy based on lowering people’s liking of salt. As the scientists at Monell discovered, processed foods taste horribly salty after you’ve been off salt for a while. By contrast, potassium chloride reduces the need for sodium while keeping foods tasting just as salty as they do with salt. That would be fine, except that potassium chloride doesn’t work with many foods, and they would need to keep using lots of salt to meet the country’s undiminished liking for salt.
In the first six years of the British program, the average person’s intake of salt fell by 15 percent, and officials there are hoping for much more. “People are starting to complain that when they go abroad, the food tastes too salty,” said Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine in London and an early proponent of the salt reduction effort. “It has saved 10,000 deaths a year from strokes and heart disease, through a public health policy that has cost virtually nothing.”
But food manufacturers are starting to complain that the initial reductions were the easiest ones. They had been adding such huge amounts of salt to their foods that cutting back by 20 percent or even 30 percent posed little problem, consumers barely noticed. Thereafter, however, trouble beset the makers of processed foods as they sought to press on with lower amounts of salts.
To get a better look at this problem, I made the rounds of the largest food companies in America, starting with Kellogg, which had branched out from cereal into all kinds of breakfast foods and snacks. At their research facility in Battle Creek, Kellogg’s food scientists prepared for me special versions of some of its most iconic brands—without using any salt at all. Their aim was to show me the difficulties they faced in trying to quit their dependence on salt, and in this, they succeeded grandly. It was, to be blunt, a culinary horror show.
The Corn Flakes tasted like metal filings, the Eggo frozen waffles like straw. Cheez-Its lost their golden yellow hue, turning a sickly yellow, and they went all gummy when chewed. The buttery flavor of the Keebler Town House Light Buttery Crackers, which contained no actual butter to start with, simply disappeared. “Salt really changes the way that your tongue will taste the product,” John Kepplinger, a Kellogg vice president and food scientist, told me as we tasted these salt-free foods. “You make one little change, and something that was a complementary flavor now starts to stand out and become objectionable.”
Taste wasn’t the only revulsion caused by salt’s absence. The manufacturers of processed meats complained about the texture they lost when salt was removed. There was even a measurable point—like the bliss point for sugar, except in reverse—at which their taste testers would spit out the meat.
In 2010, Kraft sent me a series of experimental sliced hams from its Oscar Mayer label, with the salt reduced to varying levels. Typically, three slices of this meat had 820 milligrams of sodium, more than half of the daily maximum intake currently recommended for most American adults.
I unwrapped the ham and tasted it straight, without bread. The version with 37 percent less sodium wasn’t too bad; it still reminded me of my schoolboy lunches, even without the mayo and Wonder Bread. But the next version, with an additional 3 percent sodium removed, tasted like rubber. Consumers who tested this version failed it on all the big counts: texture, flavor, and aroma. “We often fall off a cliff, and that’s what we did here,” said Russell Moroz, a Kraft vice president.
That left Oscar Mayer with ham that, at the reduced level, still had a third or more of the daily maximum for sodium, not all of which was coming from the salt. Its Deli Fresh ham, for example, has sodium lactate, sodium phosphates, sodium diacetate, sodium ascorbate, and sodium nitrite all playing critical roles.
In dealing with the British authorities, Kraft, in 2009, reported a litany of production woes. Its Oreos not only needed salt for their flavor, they also needed sodium bicarbonate to increase the alkalinity of the dough; in trying to cut back on both, Kraft said it ended up with cookies that were off-color and bitter. Same thing with its Ritz Crackers, whose allure was dependent on a savory flavor. Cheese, though, appeared to be the hardest of all. Taking more than a bit of salt out of cheddar destroyed the aroma, Kraft said, and using potassium chloride as a salt substitute left a “soapy, bitter aftertaste.” The taste testers complained most loudly when it tried to lower the salt and the fat in its cheese. “Have stopped short of any further reduction,” Kraft advised the British on its cheese endeavors, “as clear that consumer preference would be severely compromised.”
In 2010, New York City set out to emulate the Brits on salt. Led by a city health official who had previously tangled with the tobacco industry over smoking, the city put together a set of goals for the processed food industry, establishing limits for every category. With great optimism, the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, kicked off the scheme with a press conference at City Hall, telling reporters, “If we reach these goals, we will save thousands and thousands of lives in New York and the rest of the country from being lost.”
One look at the guidelines, however, made it clear why few manufacturers had signed on to the voluntary program. Breads and rolls being sold in New York and the rest of the country were averaging 139 milligrams of sodium in every ounce, and Bloomberg wanted to get them down to 103 milligrams an ounce. He wanted dry soup to drop from 234 to 163 milligrams, processed cheese to plunge from 398 to 297 milligrams, potato chips to go from 203 to 123 milligrams.
Bloomberg couched his voluntary program as the lesser of two evils: “If you want federal regulation, a good way to get it is to not do something.” But in the end, the few manufacturers who did agree to make pledges volunteered only their easiest foods—those that were already so salty that a small drop in salt wouldn’t be noticed, and those that formed the smallest part of their revenue. Kraft pledged to reduce the salt in its bacon but not in its cheese. Unilever put its butter spreads up for salt reduction, but not its dry soups or its ice cream, which can have, surprisingly, nearly 100 milligrams of salt in a half-cup serving, along with loads of sugar and fat.
“I have a question,” one of the reporters said to a representative from the Mars company who was present. “You’re doing this with rice, but really your iconic product is candy. Chocolate bars, Snickers.… I don’t see any commitment there on the billions of dollars you market in candy.” The Mars representative’s answer was so evasive that the mayor felt obliged to come to his aid. “If you help people buy their rice,” Bloomberg told the reporter, “it may help with the next product line. Other questions?”
Among the companies that didn’t sign up was one of biggest, most celebrated American food manufacturers, the Campbell Soup Company, which had declined to enlist any of its products in the mayor’s initiative.‡ So I traveled to the company’s headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, where officials agreed to show me the challenge they faced in getting out from under their dependence on salt.
This was not their first run-in with salt. The company’s habit, in fact, had given it some trouble over the years. When Campbell, in the late 1980s, sought to promote a new line of lower-fat soups as wholesome, the Federal Trade Commission intervened, accusing it of deceptive advertising, since the soups still had hefty amounts of salt. (The company settled the case by agreeing to disclose the sodium levels in its ads.) Similarly, in 2010, when Campbell began promoting its V8 Vegetable Juice as a substitute for fresh vegetables, the salt in the juice—480 milligrams of sodium in each serving cup—drew fire. The juice should not be described as healthy, a scientific journal reviewer said in rejecting a study the company had funded in hopes of buttressing its vegetables claim. (The ads ran anyway, winning an industry award for boosting sales of the juice by 4 percent.)
In meeting with me, Campbell officials said they were laboring to take as much salt out of their products as they could without hurting sales. Their recent achievements included lowering the sodium in V8 from 480 milligrams to 420
and taking some of its Pepperidge Farm bread from 360 milligrams per serving all the way down to 65. This success, they said, was due in large part to a special salt the company had acquired that has 50 percent less sodium than ordinary salt. Campbell declined to provide any details on this salt, citing competitive interests. Nonetheless, the officials stressed that, in their view, there was nothing like salt for making the company’s foods attractive to consumers and that, much like the rest of the food industry, they were reaching a limit on salt reduction.
To help me see why, Campbell arranged a tasting of two of its stalwart soups: tomato and vegetable beef. My guide was George Dowdie, senior vice president for global research and development. He had worked nearly a decade for Frito-Lay and another ten years for Seagram’s before joining Campbell in 2002; this experience gave him a deep and varied appreciation for flavorings and taste. “The reality is, we have to earn the consumer’s trust every day,” Dowdie said. “And if you disappoint the consumer, in terms of that experience and that enjoyment, there is no guarantee that they will come back.”
We stepped into a room adjoining the company’s test kitchens, where the staff brought out a stack of white porcelain bowls and several pots of hot soup. “The question has been, really, why is it so difficult to lower salt?” Dowdie said. “At the end of the day, it’s a very, very difficult challenge. If you think about the fundamental tastes, we have savory, which some folks call umami. We have bitter, we have sweet, we have sour, but the most difficult of all these tastes really is the salty taste. It has the least understood mechanisms, and there is no substitute for it. Salt has powerful roles in recipes. Think about at home. Just a pinch of salt will explode the flavor. In our world, the role of salt is to really enhance other flavors and other tastes within the soup or the broth or whatever you are cooking.”
