PepsiCo Reduces Sodium by Restructuring Salt | Hacker News Reader

PepsiCo Reduces Sodium by Restructuring Salt

foodprocessing.com

41 pointsjsm38655 comments

If this isn't innovation, I don't know what is.

Beautiful things happen when time and effort are spent on mundane problems.

The nice thing is, unlike what we've done with many other things, we're not substituting something even less healthy for the problem we're trying to cure. (ie. margarine full of transfats for butter, HFCS for sugar.)

It's just getting the same taste benefit with less sodium. Pretty much win-win (assuming it's not costly).

Wait are you sure? You're "restructuring" salt. That raises flags for me, as much as HFCS does anyway. I guess I'd have to see exactly what they do. More chloride?

No, the Na:Cl ratio should still be 1 to balance off the charges.

It's probably reducing the size of the salt crystals so that it disolves in your saliva quicker, allowing for the same taste with less mass of salt.

Increase surface area to mass ratio. Seems simple enough.

I would hazard a guess that they would be more interested in the crystal's physical formation. "Small" salt crystals already exist! Perhaps they can significantly adjust the atomic structure (less crazy that it sounds) to be optimal?

Sounds almost like an explanation I got for kosher salt.

Sounds neat, thanks for the explanation.

For anyone else wondering why Pepsi cares about this: they own Frito-Lay.

my first reaction was "they're reducing the sodium in pepsi the beverage." didn't seem to match up with a video circulating not too long ago that claims sodium was intentionally added at high levels in soft drinks (proportional to high fructose corn syrup to mask the taste of sodium).

if it's food snacks, i guess that makes more sense.

Colas have 35-50mg of sodium per can, depending on the brand.

My 355mL bottle of Coke (about 12oz) says 85mg.

That's odd, mine says 50.

Incidentally, you ever read the ingredients list of Fritos? If not, you're up for a pleasant surprise.

Ingredients: Corn, Corn Oil, and Salt. No Preservatives.

There are similarly simple ingredients in most plain potato chips. But corn chips and potato chips are usually FRIED!!

Chili Cheese Fritos Ingredients: Corn, Corn Oil, Salt and Chili Cheese. No Preservatives.

Salt is a preservative.

Your pedantry is not contributing to the conversation.

You also don't taste all the salt in meat or cheese, as you swallow bits that don't get fully chewed up. That's how it's possible that there's more salt in a serving of cheese than a serving of salted nuts, even though the nuts taste saltier.

http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/planter... http://www.thedailyplate.com/nutrition-calories/food/sorrent...

Also, a lot of the salt on salted nuts falls off and ends up in the bottom of the jar, so you don't actually eat it.

The public health disaster of the 2020s: blowback from the sodium crusade of the 2010s.

Wherein it will be found that:

- sodium isn't nearly as bad as was thought -- the numbers shopped by advocacy groups are found to have been based on flimsy studies and extrapolations -- and many population subgroups already had sodium deficiencies at the beginning of the crusade, which were worsened by the new standards

- most people unconsciously sought a homeostatic balance, and thus increased their consumption of other foods to try to restore the salt levels that were lessened-by-statutes, aggravating other health issues

- novel salt substitutes cooked up in the labs had unforeseen negative health effects

Doubtful. The amount of sodium in processed food products and restaurant food is absurdly high. Which population groups have sodium deficiencies? certainly none in the 1st world, and probably none in the 2nd & 3rd world.

Objectively define 'absurdly high'.

My suggestion of some groups already having deficiency is conjecture based on little hints here and there; more study is needed. My guesses would be: vegetarians, athletes who avoid processed food, ethnicities with a longer history of eating heavily-salted foods, some elderly, some pregnant women.

I suppose that by subjecting the entire population to an enforced low-sodium diet, and seeing who starts suffering from fatigue and early mortality, we'll find out soon enough.

I disagree. I think if anything there are more people dying because of high blood pressure and other illnesses linked through it than low-sodium issues. Besides, the fix to low-sodium, eat more salt. The fix to high blood pressure, exercise and medication.

Honest question, are we sure salt is that culpable in high blood pressure? Anyone have recent credible studies either way?

Sorry, I can't be bothered to cite a study.

But it seems to have some effect, and eating some more salt is also recommended for people with too low blood pressure.

5000-7000mg of sodium per day

or, per food product: anything that has more than 1.5x as much sodium as it does calories

> 1.5x as much sodium as it does calories

Unit mismatch? Do you assume mols of sodium?

yes, unit mismatch. calories x 1.5 mg sodium. for instance, I just had a bag of cheetos from the vending machine. 200 calories, 360 mg sodium. probably not great.

OK. I stick to SI units whenever possible. Avoids confusion.

Are cheetos a very `light' snack? I just took some "Hula Hoops" out of our vending machine and that 34g pack had almost 1000 times the number of calories you report. The "Hula Hoops" have 727 kJ / 174 kcal and 0.3g Sodium, and they also report a "salt equivalent" of 0.8g.

In the US, calories on a package are always reported as kcal, so they are approximately equal.

I agree with your general sentiment, as we've seen with HFCS, Margarine, etc.

However, I think this piece is something entirely different. It's not a salt substitute -- they're essentially increasing the surface area of the salt.

Changing the taste profile is enough for potential harm. There's a growing criticism of artificial sweeteners on the basis that they break your body's learned mapping of sweetness-to-calories -- likely resulting in overcompensation consumption of other less-sweet foods, perhaps leaving people worse off than with natural sweeteners.

By the same mechanism, a salt that tastes saltier but results in less sodium reaching the blood is enough to similarly break the learned relationship between taste and change in internal sodium levels. If your body is seeking a target sodium level, it will then crave even more salty-taste to reach its internal targets. Good for PepsiCo's many salty product lines; not necessarily good for consumers.

Unlikely. Sodium is easy to add to your diet, just sprinkle some salt on. It's difficult to take out of factory food that is manufactured with it.

Personally, I'd rather have no salt in my food and be able to add what I want later. After you stop eating so much of it, you start to notice the natural flavors in foods better anyway, and don't need to add so much.

"blowback from the sodium crusade of the 2010s"

It's already here. Cardiologists advise their patients to cut back on salt, and they turn up later with goiters caused by iodine deficiency, iodized salt previously being their main source of iodine.

Was there a corresponding 25% decrease in chlorine as well? Cuz, uh, more free chloride ions seems... not good.

There wasn't.

They just made it so you are more likely to taste the salt, therefor they have to put less in.

Just don't drop any of this Salt-9 in the oceans!

you win the thread.

i read this book, but i can't remember the name of it now

Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle". Always worth reading through again.

"Khan said PepsiCo researchers collaborated with scientists from around the world and found ways of changing the crystal size and structure to make the salt crystal dissolve more quickly, effectively putting the sodium on your tongue, not in your digestive system."

What? What happens to the salt that dissolves on your tongue? Doesn't it travel into your system as you swallow your saliva? Or do little salt beaches form in your mouth?

I think this means more of the salt hits your tongue on the way to your digestive system, i.e. from the fine article, "A Wall Street Journal story later reported only about 20 percent of the salt on a chip dissolves on the tongue, and the remaining 80 percent is swallowed without contributing to taste."

Google for "dendritic salt"... it's been around for years. It also soaks up flavors into its little pores and holds them really well. I've seen micrographs in advertisements in food industry publications that are really beautiful, fractal-looking crystals. They key is to add a touch of things like sodium ferrocyanide to hinder the usual crystallization so that the crystals only grow at the corners.

Sodium ferrocyanide sounds like it might be somewhat toxic and/or need FDA approval...

Fortunately, you can take advantage of different "salt structures" in your own cooking (table salt, kosher salt, sea salt, Fleur de Sel, etc.) without a research lab. Putting Fleur de Sel on Fritos would be a little crazy, but this sounds like the same basic idea.

Unreported is the process used to achieve the result. What enzymes are used? Are there trace amounts left in the finished salt?

What makes you think they are using enzymes?

Agreed. This is inorganic chemistry. They are probably doing something like doing something like precipitating the salt from an aqueous solution in a special way (like under high velocity flow or supersaturating aerosolized water droplets).

I guess the margarita would be an example of prior art?

I'm sure Cola will be that much healthier now. Not...

My diet soda already says "very low sodium" so why can't regular drinks also be very low?

Or is salt a preservative for the sugar drinks?

it's for the crisps/chips they make (as mentioned elsewhere, pepsi owns frito-lay)

Better eating through science.

Better better through science.

Oh come on guys, use your imaginations. I was just saying that science constantly pushes our expectations upwards, its progress advancing at such tremendous speed that we are unfazed by what yesterday passed for magic. No other discipline manages to do that, I dare say. Modern art ? Underwhelming to most people.

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