Gourmet France gets to grips with less salt

Food-loving France is to cut back on salt, with a recommendation that food companies reduce salt content in their produce by a fifth within five years, a top public health adviser said on Thursday.

Despite vehement opposition from salt producers, the AFSSA national food safety agency has already got the backing of the Health Minister Bernard Kouchner and will unveil proposals for the cuts at a conference on Friday, he said.

"People in France eat nine or 10 grams (0.3 ounces) of salt a day, and that's 10 times their need,"​ Pierre Meneton, a cardio-vascular expert at national medical research institute INSERM, told Reuters in an interview. "The Health Ministry is backing this. It will be announced tomorrow...Kouchner will be there,"​ Meneton told Reuters as national media leapt on an issue that has worried the agri-food business and salt miners for years.

Meneton, bete-noire of the French salt producers following declarations that salt is linked to tens of thousands of deaths from heart disease and other illnesses each year, said he had pushed for cuts of 30 percent.

The agri-food industry federation ANIA, which took part in consultations with the food safety agency, said in a statement it would go along with cuts as long as they were voluntary and said salt should not be demonised.

"In general terms, ANIA still questions the pertinence of reducing average salt consumption in the overall population,"​ the group said.

Bernard Moinier, a representative of the CSF salt producers federation, condemned Meneton's role as campaigner for cuts. "Of course you can grab attention by saying it's the cause of 25,000 deaths,"​ he told Reuters. "If salt killed it would be known and it would be banned. One day it's 25,000 deaths, the next it's 50,000, It's ludicrous."​

France is the fourth largest salt producer in Europe after Germany, the Netherlands and Britain. Meneton said moves to cut salt intake were also underway elsewhere in Europe, including in Britain and Finland.