Salt action varies across Europe

The EU framework for national salt initiatives was adopted in 2008 by the High Level Group on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. Members were asked to complete a template sent out by the Commission afterwards, giving details of individual national salt initiatives.

Some countries, such as France, Ireland and the UK, started raising public awareness as early as 2004 (Ireland, Lithuania, UK) and 2005 (Belgium). But in Austria, Estonia, Spain, France, Latvia, Norway, and Switzerland, the campaigns only swung into action in 2009.

In the latest report on the framework, published last summer, Greece, Sweden and Slovakia are seen to have taken no action on awareness raising yet, but they do report progress in other areas like data collection and monitoring.

Germany, EL and MT stand out as the slowest member states in the process. Germany only started studying sodium excretion in the population so as to measure total salt intake last year.

As for reformulation to reduce levels in foods, France, Ireland and the UK were early adopters again; Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Malta, Sweden, Slovenia did not have plans in place.

The report is available online at this link http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/nutrition/documents/national_salt_en.pdf​

Industry on board​

On the industry side, however, a new report from the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU showed reformulation as a major priority – not just to reduce salt but for saturated fat and sugar, and to boost vitamin levels too.

Across the industry, some 21 per cent of companies said in a survey in 2008 that their reformulation plans were continuing. Eight two per cent of CIAA members responded in the affirmative to the same question.

In general, bigger companies appear to be most advanced on reformulation, CIAA said, but the movement is now spreading to companies of all sizes.