Australia’s voluntary food formulation guidelines are inadequate at preventing diet-related diseases such as heart attack and stroke, a World Health Organization food scientist has said.
Dr Luz Maria De Regil made the comments off the back of a study published in the journal The Lancet Public Health on Thursday, which found making Australian Health Food Partnership sodium limits compulsory could prevent more than 12,700 heart disease cases, 9,400 kidney disease cases and 800 deaths within a decade.
Adopting the more rigorous World Health Organization reduction targets would see these benefits triple, the study found, preventing more than 43,900 heart disease cases, 32,400 kidney disease cases and 2,900 deaths over the same period.
“With only voluntary measures in place to reduce sodium in the food supply, Australia may not offer to all its population adequate protection from heart attack, stroke, and other health problems,” De Regil said.
“The WHO is calling on all countries to implement our ‘best buy’ interventions for sodium reduction, and on governments to mandate that manufacturers implement the WHO benchmarks for sodium content in food.”
The WHO best buy interventions are cost-effective, feasible strategies recommended to help countries reduce non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
To make their calculations for disease prevention, researchers led by The George Institute for Global Health built a computer model to mimic Australia’s adult population’s health over time. Data on sodium intake, packaged foods, blood pressure and disease rates were fed into the model.
Because Australia’s sodium limits, which differ depending on food category, are voluntary and designed in cooperation with the food industry, many food companies choose not to adopt them. WHO sets a stricter global benchmark for sodium levels across most categories of food.
For example, Australia sets a sodium target for ham of 1,005mg per 100g, while the WHO benchmark is 900mg per 100g. For bacon, Australia’s target is 1,005mg, compared with the WHO’s 880mg per 100g limit.
Breads, dips and sauces, cheese and snacks such as chips are other common sources of sodium that come from processed foods rather than from salt added at the dinner table or while cooking from scratch.
A co-author of the research, biostatistician Dr Jason Wu from the University of NSW, said the study is the first to project the long-term impacts of setting mandatory sodium reduction targets for processed foods in Australia.
“Sometimes we feel like we’re banging our head against the brick wall in trying to get the government to act, and we keep coming up with evidence for why mandatory action is important,” he said.
“This is fairly low-hanging fruit that would have a significant impact on health, and in other countries that have implemented mandates around content of food, it hasn’t bankrupted the food industry.”
He said consumers are also supportive of policies that make foods healthier, or that make unhealthy processed foods easier to identify.
Nutritionist and dietician Dr Rosemary Stanton said the impact on preventable deaths and disease would be greater if the government were to mandate and strengthen the health star rating system, rather than just focusing on sodium levels.
The health star system rates foods from half a star to five stars – the more stars, the healthier the choice – and was intended as a quick way for consumers to identify nutritious foods. But the system was co-designed with the food industry, is not mandatory, and has also been subject to criticism.
“We also need an education program to make sure people eat less ultra-processed foods that also tend to be high in sodium but also sugar,” Stanton said.
“The real problem is that the food industry does what they like. They form these partnerships, voluntary partnerships, and it gives them an excuse to act like they are doing something, and recommendations are too much influenced by the lobbying and profitability of the food industry.”
