Sodium content in Swedish processed food items compared to other countries

Abstract

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Dietary sodium has a dose-response relationship with cardiovascular disease, and sodium intake in Sweden exceeds national and international recommendations. Two thirds of dietary sodium intake comes from processed foods, and adults in Sweden eat more processed foods than any other European country. We hypothesised that sodium content in Swedish processed foods is higher than other countries due to the high sodium intake in the Swedish population. Purpose To investigate sodium content in Swedish processed food items, and how it differs from Australia, France, Hong Kong, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Method Data were collected from retailers by trained research staff using standardised methods. Ten food categories were compared using Kruskal-Wallis test of ranks. Results Compared to other countries, Sweden had among the highest sodium content in the ‘dairy’ and ‘convenience foods’ categories, but among the lowest in ‘cereal and grain products’, ‘seafood and seafood products’ and ‘snack foods’ categories. The highest sodium contents in the Swedish data were found in the ‘meat and meat products’ category. Conclusion Contrary to our hypothesis, Swedish processed foods had overall lower sodium content than most other included countries. Sodium content differed substantially between countries in all food categories. Swedish foods had higher sodium content than other countries in increasingly consumed food categories.