There is an increasing trend to reduce salt in our foods. Although this may have significant health benefits, it also creates major food safety issues.

We have all heard about the salted meat that was on the ships at the time of the First Fleet. It may not have tasted fantastic, but allowed the sailors to have meat throughout their long voyages. The salt acted as a preservative and extended the life of the meat.

Salt (sodium chloride) is not only added to food to give flavour but to help preserve it. Reducing the salt level, also reduces the preservative effect.

Foods that have been formulated with less salt will have a shorter shelf-life if no other preservative (whether natural or not) is then used instead.

Studies have shown that a specially processed form of seaweed could be readily used to replace salt in formulations and the flavour is well accepted in taste panels.

A governemnt funded study in the UK showed that consumers had a high acceptability for this product in bread when used to replace both 50 and 100 percent of the salt.

The seaweed replacement has two major advantages; it gives preservative effect to the food and contains useful minerals (not in salt) - making it a health benefit as well.

Although further study is ongoing, there may be allergen benefits as well with the use of seaweed replacements.