Salt reduction in meat products – challenge for meat industry

Abstract

History of salt is ancient as the history of human population. Discovery and use of salt have made the food sustainable for longer period, available regardless of the season of the year and enabled its transport over long distances. For several millions of years, the prehistoric men consumed less than 0.5 g of salt daily. But today, daily salt intake is very high. Due to negative effect of salt (sodium) on the human health, modern nutrition trend is to decrease salt content in processed food. Because of that the meat products are one of the main source of sodium, role of the meat industry in the reduction of salt content in the contribution to the human health will be great. But it is not so common problem, because salt has important contribution to technological and sensory properties as well as to the microbial stability of meat products. Eleven EU countries have entered to the program of salt reduction, 16% in the next 4 years. In the goal to human health protection it is very important for food industry of each country to make decision to permanently decrease salt/sodium content.