Professor Henle, why is there salt in our sweeteners?
In the vernacular, we usually understand “salt” to mean common table salt, i.e. sodium chloride. But sweeteners are also salts from a chemical perspective. They consist of cations and anions. The sodium content in the sweetener for table salt is extrapolated for the nutritional labeling in order to be able to estimate the contribution of sweeteners to the sodium intake. That’s all. A bit complicated.
So the information about NaCl is only for the consumer on the sweetener?
Strictly speaking yes. Consumers should be able to see how much salt, which actually means sodium, they ingest daily. In fact, the amount of sodium you ingest from sweeteners doesn’t matter that much. It only becomes relevant when we talk about how much salt is ingested overall and possibly too much.
Are we consuming too much salt?
Yes. On average, we Germans eat too much of everything: too much fat, too much sugar and also too much salt.
Salts are important for the body …
Yes, of course. The body has to absorb salts, electrolytes are essential. The cells need salt to regulate body fluids and the kidneys also depend on it. In extreme cases, completely avoiding the intake of salt can even be life-threatening. However, we tend to consume more salt than we need. The German Society for Nutrition recommends six grams of salt a day, for the functioning of the body we need at least one to two grams of salt a day. According to consumption studies by the Federal Ministry of Nutrition, however, women consume around eight to nine grams of salt a day and men even consume more than ten grams of salt a day.