UAMS, Springdale groups get $2M grant to cut salt in meals

SPRINGDALE -- Health care and food organizations are taking aim at a threat that sits on dinner tables and in spice cabinets throughout Northwest Arkansas: salt.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is partnering with Springdale Public Schools and several nonprofit groups that prepare and provide meals for tens of thousands of families each year to find ways to reduce the sodium content of those foods. The university plans to spread that effort throughout Benton and Washington counties during the next five years thanks to a $2 million grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The sodium in table salt, breads, meats and other processed foods is vital to the human body, making up part of the blood and powering the spark between nerves and brain cells. But eating too much salt is both easy and risky, according to the CDC.

The recommended amount to eat per day is about a level teaspoon, and the average American eats 150 percent of that amount. Meanwhile, too much sodium is strongly linked to higher blood pressure, strokes and other cardiovascular disease, some of the most common causes of death in the country and in Arkansas.

One-third of Arkansas adults have high blood pressure, according to the state Department of Health, and the state is first in the nation for the rate of stroke deaths.

"So reducing sodium across the population is certainly a health priority," said Pearl McElfish, associate vice chancellor for the university's northwest campus. "It's really about partnering with those organizations and empowering them to make small modifications that can have a very big impact on the people that they serve."

The effort will find foods' current salt levels as a baseline and set goals for its reduction, find ways to change food preparation and menus for less salt, and teach clients or students about nutrition, according to a university news release. Any changes will also be taste-tested among the people affected to make sure they can stick, McElfish said.

Those plans are meant to make a difference at places like the Samaritan Community Center, which provides pantries and free hot lunches at its Springdale and Rogers cafes and runs a "SnackPacks for Kids" program that sends out fruit cups, cereal and other food for thousands of children during weekends and summertime. The cafes give out about 100,000 meals a year, said Mary Mann, the group's social media director.

Springdale's Promise Land Food Program, which gives out summer and after-school meals for kids around the region, and the same city's United Methodist First Church, which has a food program and weekly meals, are also part of the sodium initiative.

Dozens of people were at the Springdale Samaritan cafe during lunch Thursday as volunteers scooped steaming turkey and mashed potatoes onto plates along with salad and a banana. Many of the visitors and cooks know each other by name, they said.

"It's kind of like a family here," said James Upton, who works in his sister's food truck when he can and whose family of five typically comes a couple times a week. The family doesn't have many opportunities to cook meals and the cafe's a chance to get out of the house.

"This place helps out a lot," he said.

The sodium initiative will mesh well with Samaritan's own efforts to make its food more healthful because low-income people are more likely to deal with obesity and other health issues from cheap and processed food, Mann said. The center grows a 15,000-square-foot fruit and vegetable garden, for example, that provides produce to the kitchens, and it grows lettuce in a greenhouse through the winter. It also has adjusted the food it asks for from donors.

Joe Dukeshire, one of two staff cooks in Springdale, said they'd been trying to use seasonings and herbs for flavor instead of more salt. He was glad for the chance to keep making the food better for the clients. The education from the university program will be a big help, as people aren't always sure how to cook or use different, healthful types of food, he said.

"It's all about them out there as far as I'm concerned," he said from the kitchen.

Edward Whitfield, director of the 3-year-old Promise Land program, said he looks forward to taking advantage of the university's expertise. The program sends cooked meals to several Boys & Girls Clubs, Springdale's Jones Center and Fayetteville's Yvonne Richardson Center.

"Hopefully, with their help and insight, we can reduce our sodium, because that's something we've got to focus on," he said.

The grant's part of a nationwide sodium-reduction project by the CDC. The project reduced sodium within recommended limits for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves 650,000 students. Philadelphia reduced the sodium in meals at an adult care residential facility by one-sixth between 2012 and 2016, according to the CDC.

McElfish said the Arkansas project would be guided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's goals for reducing sodium in school breakfasts and lunches. The plan essentially is to cut sodium levels in the lunches in half from 2012 to 2022, according to the department's timeline.

The initiative overlaps with other university projects trying to address the fact that many health issues are more common among the area's Hispanic and Marshallese residents, McElfish said.

American nuclear testing, poverty and other issues severely disrupted Marshall Islanders' traditional diet of fish and plant-based meals, for example, which was replaced with salty, canned and processed food. Roughly 80 percent of the islanders in Northwest Arkansas have high blood pressure or are approaching it, according to a university survey.

Those concerns are partly why the initiative began in Springdale and will likely next go into Rogers, which also has a large Hispanic population, McElfish said. She said it will spread throughout the two counties during the next year.

Metro on 12/19/2016