Cape Town - South Africans will have to get used to less salt in their snacks, bread, butter, breakfast cereal and sausages as a June deadline to reduce sodium chloride in a range of processed food approaches.
The national department of health is starting to enforce new rules drastically cutting back on salt under the Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act.
The regulations, which were gazetted three years ago, will cut the salt in bread, butter, margarine, snacks, breakfast cereals, processed meats such as sausages, stock cubes, savoury powders and soups.
The reduction in salt content will differ according to the food type.
The new law aims to reduce non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and strokes, which have been on the increase.
More than 6 million South Africans suffer from hypertension – one of the highest rates in the world.
The World Health Organisation recommends a daily intake of salt of 5g – about a teaspoon. But studies have shown that some South Africans eat as much as 40g of salt a day.
Joe Maila, spokesperson for Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, said failure to meet the June deadline for reducing salt could lead to food producers being punished. The size of fines would correspond to the number of products breaching the new rules.
“We hope though that this will not be necessary,” he said.
Maila said the department was already testing products for compliance and to engage the food industry in the new regimen.
“We will continue to test products in the forthcoming financial year. Our hope is that because the introduction of this regulation was such an amicable one with the industry that compliance will not be a big issue. It is anticipated that the big industry will comply around 95 percent of products. We are still negotiating around the final five percent,” he said.
According to the rules, bread, breakfast cereals and porridges and all fat spreads should have a maximum of 550mg of salt per 100g, while processed meats such as sausages can have between 650mg of salt to 950mg per 100g.
Savoury snacks and potato crisps will be allowed more salt - between 800mg to 1 000mg per 100g - while dry soups, gravy powders and dry noodles will be allowed a maximum of 3 500mg per 100g. Food manufacturers have until June to comply with the first set of targets.
A second deadline will be in 2019.
Although some companies have raised concerns about the impact that reduced salt would have on the shelf life of certain foods, most have agreed to the June deadline.
Nevashnee Naicker from Tiger Brands – the country’s largest food manufacturer - said the company started re-formulating products when the new rules were announced, and would meet the deadline.
She said the industry was still waiting for an amendment to the rules which affected salt levels in two product categories.
“The products affected (include) bread, processed meat and popcorn. Shelf life will obviously be impacted due to the reduced salt. However, Tiger Brands has done an enormous amount of work to ensure the integrity and safety of the affected products.”
Michelle Berman, spokeswoman for Simba the country’s leading snack manufacturer, said the company would ensure that its products comply with all regulations.
“Implementing sodium reduction, as per the new legislation, has presented a number of challenges and has not been a simple task. But we are pleased to say that we are on track to meet all the sodium reduction requirements for 2016,” she said.
Cape Argus