• Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 11, 2010 10:34 AM

Several major food companies have been slowly and quietly reducing the amount of sodium in their products in response to pressure from consumer watchdogs and government regulators, Ilan Brat and Maurice Tamman report. ConAgra has cut about a third of the sodium its Chef Boyardee canned pasta line over five years, for example, with nary a peep. There is, of course, a rationale to keeping mum.

"If you gradually move sodium down in products, the consumers that use those products get used to them still tasting good but at lower salt," says Douglas Balentine, Unilever's North American director of nutrition and health.

When it comes to buying healthy products, experience has shown that consumers don't always put their money where their mouths are. Kellogg, for example, launched a low-sodium version of Corn Flakes as well as Low Rice Krispies in the 1980s that had no sodium per serving versus 300 milligrams in the original cereals. It scrapped the products after four years of dismal sales.

In related news, New York City is expected to announce voluntary sodium-reduction targets for restaurants and food makers today. It wants to lower Americans' salt intake by at least 20% by 2014.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »