Toddler foods, children’s foods: assessing sodium in packaged supermarket foods targeted at children

Objective To critically examine child-oriented packaged food products sold in Canada for their sodium content, and to assess them light of intake recommendations, the current policy context and suggested targets. Design Baby/toddler foods (n 186) and child-oriented packaged foods (n 354) were coded for various attributes (including sodium). Summary statistics were created for sodium, then the children’s food products were compared with the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) ‘targets’ for sodium in packaged foods. Also assessed were the products’ per-serving sodium levels were assessed in light of the US Institute of Medicine’s dietary reference intakes and Canada’s Food Guide. Setting Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Subjects None. Results Twenty per cent of products could be classified as having high sodium levels. Certain sub-categories of food (i.e. toddler entrées, children’s packaged lunches, soups and canned pastas) were problematic. Significantly, when scaled in according to Schedule M or viewed in light of the serving sizes on the Nutrition Facts table, the sodium level in various dry goods products generally fell within, and below, the Adequate Intake (AI)/Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) band for sodium. When scaled in accordance with the UK FSA targets, however, none of the (same) products met the targets.Conclusions In light of AI/UL thresholds based on age and per-serving cut-offs, packaged foodstuffs for youngsters fare relatively well, with the exception of some problematic areas. ‘Stealth sodium’ and ‘subtle sodium’ are important considerations; so is use of the FSA’s scaling method to evaluate sodium content, because it is highly sensitive to the difference between the reference amount and the actual real-world serving size for the product being considered.