Nowadays, salt is a bit of a dirty word. For being just a seasoning, it’s rife with controversy. The love for its taste is seemingly written into our DNA. Salty snacks and savory meals make it to the top of our lists of favourite dishes, and many of us have difficulty saying no to these foods. Unfortunately, excess sodium has been linked to life-threatening health issues, including hypertension, heart failure, and strokes. Despite our love for its taste, consumers are now wary of salt’s wrap sheet. In growing numbers across North America, they’re turning their backs on over-processed foods with too much salt. Instead of alphabet-soup ingredient lists, they’re looking for products that offer a natural, risk-free alternative to sodium.
As any chef will tell you, salt isn’t inherently bad. It plays an important role in seasoning any dish, taking simple ingredients and enhancing their natural flavours. It’s a classic way to preserve food and capture the ‘Unami’ flavour. Known as one of the five basic tastes, umami represents the savoury or meaty component that’s naturally rich in fish, parmesan cheese, soy sauce, and green tea. It has since been added to processed meats, condiments, spices, and a variety of packaged foods for its ability to enhance their flavouring by adding to their perceived saltines.
It’s in these processed foods that many of us run into issues with sodium. The average box found in the frozen food aisle contains far too much salt, accounting for roughly 77% of the sodium Canadians consume. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, unhealthy diets reliant on these heavily processed foods are one of the reasons why Canadians consume 3, 400 mg of sodium per day — which is 1, 100 mg over the daily recommended amount. Recent studies have linked excessive salt in our diets leads to high blood pressure, which can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.
For all that it does to provide Unami, sodium lends a signature flavour profile to food, so its absence can be greatly missed if it’s not replaced by an appropriate substitute. Luckily, you can remove sodium from your products without eliminating this essential fifth taste or any important preservation. Distribution companies, known for their innovative yet common sense solutions to food production problems, have invested both time and effort examining and understanding the taste profile of salt. These chemical suppliers, like Cambrian Solutions, have created natural, healthful alternatives to sodium.
Cambrian has a number of natural preservatives that increase flavouring without compromising consumer’s values. With label friendly Camlow in particular, they’re able to recreate sodium’s advantages without any of its perceived drawbacks. They use natural, healthy ingredients from global suppliers, allowing you to reduce your salt content by up to 40%. When you partner with a chemical company of their quality, you too could use these wholesome substitutions in your line of products.
Sodium is no longer the only way to create the savoury taste that you want, which means you don’t have to contend with its controversial past any longer. Remove it from your products, and tap into the healthful trends of ‘kitchen-cupboard’ ingredients by contacting a healthful ingredient distribution company. Satisfy your customer’s need for straightforward and clean labels without excessive sodium and improve the quality of your products.
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