Salt contributes much to meat products — flavor, water-holding capacity and food safety. The top challenge for meat and poultry processors is that sodium comes primarily from the sodium chloride in brines, marinades and seasonings along with the leavening agents in batters and breadings and the sodium bicarbonate in bread crumbs. Additionally, sodium in products comes from the sodium nitrite, sodium ascorbate and sodium erythorbate in curing agents and cure accelerators, from preservative ingredients that are sodium acetates and lactates and the phosphates in water-binding ingredients. All of these sodium ingredients are essential for that particular application, says Kantha Shelke, food scientist and principal at Corvus Blue, in Chicago.
“Reducing sodium requires addressing the fundamental or defining functionality and often under cost and clean-label constraints,” she says.