Monitoring Sodium and Potassium in Processed Foods

Thursday, 10 March 2022

September 2003 to December 2021

It is believed that processed foods and out of home (OOH) foods account for approximately 75% of an individual’s salt intake . While the FSAI has built extensive data in relation to the monitoring of processed foods, there is little information regarding out of home  salt sources in Ireland. Therefore, identifiying this information gap and in line with the recommendations of the FSAI report “Salt and Health: Review of the Scientific Evidence and Recommendations for Public Policy in Ireland (Revision 1) (2016), the FSAI undertook a pilot study in 2020 to investigate the feasibility in collecting OOH lunchtime food options for sodium and potassium monitoring purposes.

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the results obtained in the FSAI salt monitoring surveys which have been conducted on annual basis since 2003.