The federal government asked food companies to take salt out of packaged food. New research suggests that when companies designed new products, most of them did not.
An analysis presented this week at the American Society for Nutrition's annual meeting compared the sodium content of packaged foods introduced in the United States between 2015 and 2025, six years before and four years after the FDA issued voluntary Phase I sodium targets in 2021. Across nine food categories that together account for most dietary sodium in American diets, researchers found no difference in sodium content between products launched before the guidance and products launched after it. In four categories, the sodium content of newer products was higher.
