Sugar and Salt: Popular Ingredients with Possible Lawsuits

There are also commercial advantages to treating the voluntary sodium reduction guidelines as if they presage a mandate. Manufacturers who investigate lower sodium alternatives to their current products will have the advantage of using this time to develop products that consumers will find more palatable despite their lower sodium content. When lower sodium levels are mandated, a manufacturer who is prepared could enjoy considerable advantage over the competition if its low-sodium lines are store-ready while competitors are still working to comply with the new standards.

FDA’s Isolated Approach

One thing that should not be lost in focusing on the FDA’s sugar and salt initiatives is the fundamental question of whether an ingredient-by-ingredient approach to food regulation is most beneficial for consumers. A significant amount of research suggests that high blood pressure, typically associated with Americans’ high sodium diet, is more a result of the overall low potassium intake in the U.S. In other words, the problem is not that Americans eat too much salt, but that they eat too few fruits and vegetables and other foods high in potassium. This may explain why, on average, people in countries such as Italy experience fewer cardiovascular problems than Americans do, even though its average salt intake is significantly higher than in the U.S. It also highlights the inherent limitations of regulating ingredients in isolation, and ignoring the potential that health effects associated with specific ingredients may also depend on the balance of those ingredients against other substances in the human body.

Political realities, and public relations, may make it easy to pursue regulation of certain ingredients and industries. But if the FDA is truly concerned with promoting a “balanced” diet, it should remember that balancing involves evaluating all of the variables against one another simultaneously. Picking at ingredients one-by-one without keeping the entire system in mind may ultimately increase the risk that consumers will develop the poor health conditions that FDA is attempting to curtail.

Gruver is a senior associate in Kaye Scholer’s complex commercial litigation department and is a member of the firm’s Product Liability Group. Reach him at [email protected]. Pogust is special counsel in the firm’s complex commercial litigation department and is also a member of the Product Liability Group. Reach him at [email protected].