In October of 2007, then-federal-health-minister Tony Clement declared war on salt. The “silent invader of our food supply,” he said, was a bigger threat to the health of Canadians than artery-clogging trans fats.
The minister announced the creation of a Sodium Working Group to draft an action plan and promised to move quickly. Twenty months later, there is still no plan and no deadline for coming up with one.
Meanwhile, Canadians remain among the top consumers of salt in the world, gobbling an average of 3,100 milligrams a day – more than twice the recommended daily amount. Canada is one of the few governments in the Western world that has not tackled salt, a common dietary additive that is contributing to a deadly epidemic of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“Sodium is a hidden, silent killer in our food supply. It's contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of people every year but we are largely disregarding this problem in public policy,” said Norm Campbell, the Canadian Research Chair in Hypertension Prevention and Control and president of Blood Pressure Canada, an advocacy group. “There is an urgent need for action.”
The lack of urgency on the part of government is frustrating, as is the plodding pace of the Sodium Working Group, said Stephen Samis, director of health policy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
“Let's face it, they've been slow,” he said, although he allows that a federal election, a new health minister and personnel changes at Health Canada have all conspired to delay the process.
“But they need to expedite their work. This is an important public-policy issue and we can't wait forever for action.”
In the fall of 2007, just before Mr. Clement's announcement, a coalition of 17 health groups including the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association, issued a National Sodium Policy Statement that detailed exactly what they thought needed to be done.
The document called for sharp reductions in the sodium content of processed foods and fast foods (either voluntary or enforced by regulation), better labelling of packaged foods and education campaigns to persuade Canadians to alter their salty tastes.
They proposed a clear objective and a timetable – cut Canadians' intake of salt by half by 2020.
So, what has the Sodium Working Group been doing all this time?
First, it took Ottawa months to appoint the 24 members, a cross-section of representatives from consumer health groups, health practitioners, academia, industry and government. The group met three times in 2008 and achieved little but hashing out its terms of reference.
In May of this year, the working group managed to “define a process to establish a Canadian approach to dietary sodium reduction, including targets, an education/awareness strategy and a research agenda,” said Stéphane Shank, a spokesman for Health Canada.
Mr. Shank said the department “is happy with the progress of the Sodium Working Group,” and that another meeting is slated for the fall. (Health Canada would agree only to answer written questions and it did so only in broad terms.)
Despite the slow progress, Dr. Campbell still believes the Sodium Working Group will come up with the right recommendations and that the government will implement a much-needed plan. The question is when that will happen.
Excessive salt consumption is causing the premature deaths of 30 Canadians a day, according to research published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. Cardiovascular disease kills more Canadians each year than anything but cancer and it is estimated that one in every eight cardiac events (such as heart attacks and strokes) is caused by excess sodium. Salt consumption is one of the most obvious modifiable risk factors for heart disease, since cutting salt has an almost immediate impact on blood pressure.
Frans Leenen, director of the hypertension unit at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, said it is frustrating to know that other countries have made tremendous progress reducing salt consumption while Canada has yet to take the issue seriously.
