Three days ago I made a comment in my entry about Campbell’s soup that the government would probably adopt legislation concerning sodium levels in Canadian food within the next year.  Well, this morning’s Ottawa Citizen has a front-page article titled Health Canada wages war on excessive salt intake.  It reports that there is now a federally appointed working group that is tasked with developing a plan to reduce sodium levels in food.  It’s expected that they’ll recommend Canada adopt the British strategy, which has seen the average daily intake of sodium by adults in Britain drop by 500mg between 2001 and 2006.  The impact on pre-packed meals has been a 45% reduction in four years and 85% have already reached the targets set for 2010, which is a more than one third reduction.

It’s about time.

Data from the Canadian Stroke Network indicates that nearly 11 000 Canadians a year die because of the effects of excessive sodium intake.  It has been linked to hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke, cardiovascular diseases and asthma, to name a few things.

So, hopefully this sounds the end of the roast beef sandwich with 2 grams of sodium in it.