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Under FDA eye, cheesemakers have been proactive on sodium reduction

Michael Dykes

Michael Dykes, president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association, contributes this column bimonthly for Cheese Market News®.

As consumers look for new and delicious ways to get additional protein and nutrients in their diet, Americans are consuming more cheese than ever before. Now, FDA has proposed new draft guidance for Phase II of its stepwise approach to reducing sodium across the food supply that could put this growth in jeopardy.

FDA is developing this guidance to reduce diet-related chronic diseases including hypertension or high blood pressure. The proposed Phase II targets follow an initial set of targets issued in October 2021 and will continue FDA’s focus on limiting sodium, saturated fat and added sugars in processed, packaged and prepared foods.

While the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) continues to agree with the agency’s stepwise approach to sodium reduction that allows consumer preferences and palates to adjust, we remain deeply concerned that FDA is not fully accounting for the important role sodium plays in the quality and safety of cheese categories within the updated targets. In fact, the goals — while voluntary — ignore the chief recommendation by IDFA and dairy food companies to exempt the cheese category from lower targets until the scientific literature is thoroughly reviewed to address the question of how low cheesemakers can go in reducing sodium before the quality and safety of their products are impacted. (To view the recommendations from IDFA and the National Milk Producers Federation, visit www.idfa.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Sodium-Guidance-Short-Term-Joint-Comments.pdf.) While FDA’s Phase II goals do not completely ignore this recommendation, there are several cheese categories with much lower Phase II targets compared to their original Phase I targets.

The chart above includes a handy comparison of sodium targets from FDA’s Phase I and Phase II guidance (see chart above).

IDFA member companies have spent years researching and developing cheeses with reduced sodium that do not sacrifice food safety and quality. In fact, FDA’s preliminary assessment of sodium reduction from 2010 to 2022 highlighted dairy as one of the leading sectors reducing sodium, with 67% of dairy categories reducing sodium and an additional 13% of dairy categories remaining unchanged. In addition, FDA stated during IDFA’s recent Regulatory RoundUP that even small reductions in sodium can have a dramatic impact on public health given how much cheese the average American consumes.

IDFA has commissioned the University of Wisconsin to do an extensive review of the literature and relevant unpublished data to capture the intrinsic risk factors that impact the survival and growth of pathogens in various cheese types, the impact of sodium on addressing these risks, and the feasibility of and limitations to reducing sodium, including through the use of salt substitutes, in these products. IDFA will provide this research to FDA to inform its decision-making on voluntary sodium reduction targets moving forward.

As IDFA prepares to respond to FDA to inform any final guidance, we ask that cheesemakers and those supplying the industry with ingredients also make your voices heard. We want to maintain the positive attributes consumers associate with quality American cheeses and ensure the Phase II targets for cheeses do not hamper this continued growth.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.

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