FDA Sodium Reduction Targets: 2026 Complete Guide

The FDA sodium reduction targets are voluntary guidance, not legal limits. Phase I was finalized in October 2021, while Phase II was issued as draft guidance in August 2024 and remains draft as of September 2026. Missing a category target does not make a food misbranded, but sodium claims and Nutrition Facts labeling rules are binding.

This guide explains what Phase I established, what the Phase II draft would ask manufacturers to achieve, how category targets work, how to compare your product against them, and where sodium requirements become enforceable under 21 CFR 101.61 and 21 CFR 101.9. It is written for manufacturers and small producers deciding whether reformulation is worth the cost.

Two things are outside its scope. It does not reproduce the individual category numbers, which sit in FDA sodium targets by food category, and it does not walk through the Nutrition Facts sodium line format in detail, which is covered in sodium nutrition label requirements.

FDA sodium guidance status: what is binding and what is not

Start here because trade coverage often blurs voluntary targets and binding requirements.

• The sodium reduction targets are voluntary guidance. They represent FDA's current thinking about where sodium concentrations in the food supply should move. Manufacturers are not legally required to meet them, and a product is not misbranded simply because it exceeds a target.
• Phase I (Edition 1) was finalized in October 2021. It is final guidance, but it remains voluntary. "Final" describes the status of the guidance document, not a legal obligation.
• Phase II (Edition 2) was issued as draft guidance on 15 August 2024, followed by the Federal Register notice on 16 August 2024. It remains draft as of September 2026, so it does not represent even FDA's settled position, much less a legal requirement.
• Sodium nutrient content claims under 21 CFR 101.61 are binding. If you put "low sodium" on a package, the food must meet the regulatory definition or the label is out of compliance.
• The proposed reduction of the "low sodium" threshold from 140 mg to 115 mg is not in force. It appears in the proposed front-of-package rule. The binding definition today remains 140 mg.

The practical distinction is simple: sodium reduction targets can carry commercial weight, while nutrient content claim definitions are law. Confusing the two can make reformulation decisions more expensive than they need to be.

Why FDA created sodium reduction targets

FDA's case for sodium reduction is population-level. Average sodium intake in the United States is about 3,400 mg per day, roughly 50 percent above the recommended limit of 2,300 mg.

The difference is not mainly caused by salt added at the table. More than 70 percent of sodium intake comes from commercially processed, packaged and prepared foods. Much of the sodium a person consumes has therefore already been determined by the formulator before the product reaches the shelf.

That explains FDA's use of category targets rather than relying only on consumer education. If sodium is already built into the product, telling consumers to use less salt addresses only part of the intake.

The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released 7 January 2026, retain the headline recommendation of less than 2,300 mg per day for ages 14 and older. Lower limits apply to children: under 1,200 mg for ages 1 to 3, under 1,500 mg for ages 4 to 8, and under 1,800 mg for ages 9 to 13.

The Guidelines also advise avoiding highly processed foods that are salty or sweet. They did not change the Daily Values. The DVs in 101.9 remain unchanged, and changing them would require rulemaking.

How the FDA sodium reduction targets work

There is no single FDA sodium target for every food. The system is category-based, which makes the targets more workable across different types of food but also more complicated to apply.

For each food subcategory, FDA publishes two figures, both expressed as milligrams of sodium per 100 g of food:

• Sales-weighted mean target. This is the average sodium concentration the category should reach. Because the calculation is sales-weighted, a high-volume product affects the average more than a niche product.
• Upper bound concentration. This is a ceiling for individual products. For a single manufacturer evaluating one SKU, this is usually the more immediately useful number because it identifies outliers.

Phase I established targets for 163 food subcategories. These are often described as falling within 16 overarching categories, but that grouping figure comes from a law firm summary rather than the guidance document itself. Treat 163 as the number you can rely on and 16 as an approximation.

Phase II covers the same 163 subcategories of commercially processed, packaged and restaurant-prepared foods.

Here is a worked example using flavored potato and vegetable chips, the Phase II subcategory identified in published summaries. It converts a hypothetical 28 g labeled serving to show how a per-100 g target translates onto a Nutrition Facts panel. Compare it with the sodium line on the potato chips label example.

Measure	Per 100 g	Per 28 g serving	Declared after rounding	%DV vs 2,300 mg
Phase II target mean	480 mg	134.4 mg	135 mg	6%
Phase II upper bound	670 mg	187.6 mg	190 mg	8%

A product sitting exactly on its category mean does not automatically qualify as a low sodium food. A result of 135 mg per 28 g falls below the 140 mg claim threshold because of the serving size, not because meeting the category mean itself qualifies the product for the claim.

Rounding also matters because values such as 134.4 mg and 187.6 mg do not appear that way on the finished Nutrition Facts label.

What Phase II sodium reduction targets would ask for

Phase I aimed to reduce average sodium intake from about 3,400 mg to about 3,000 mg per day, a reduction of roughly 12 percent. FDA set that goal over two and a half years from the October 2021 issuance, putting the informal milestone around April 2024.

Phase II sets a lower goal: about 2,750 mg per day, roughly 20 percent below the pre-Phase-I baseline, within three years after finalization.

That three-year clock has not started.

FDA's guidance page states that once Edition 2 is finalized, it will replace Edition 1. Phase I therefore remains the operative guidance today.

FDA's 2022 data assessment found that roughly 40 percent of the Phase I targets had either been reached or were within 10 percent. FDA also said it would reassess progress approximately every three years.

A July 2026 conference analysis presented at NUTRITION 2026, which was not peer reviewed, reported little measurable effect from the 2021 targets on new product launches across nine categories. It reported sodium increases in dry soups, popcorn, breads and corn snacks.

Comments on the Phase II draft closed on 13 January 2025 after an extension from 14 November 2024.

FDA's 2026 Human Foods Program priority list and guidance agenda do not identify sodium targets among the agency's 2026 deliverables, the clearest available signal that finalization is not imminent.

Binding sodium requirements in 21 CFR 101.61

This is where sodium moves from voluntary guidance to enforceable labeling requirements. Every definition below is current and binding.

Individual-food criteria are measured per RACC, with an additional per 50 g test when the RACC is 30 g or less or 2 tablespoons or less. Meals and main dishes are evaluated per 100 g.

Claim	Individual foods	Meals and main dishes
Sodium free, no sodium, zero sodium	Less than 5 mg per RACC and per labeled serving, with no added sodium chloride or sodium-containing ingredient unless asterisked as adding a trivial amount	Less than 5 mg per labeled serving
Very low sodium	35 mg or less per RACC	35 mg or less per 100 g
Low sodium, low in sodium, little sodium, low source of sodium	140 mg or less per RACC	140 mg or less per 100 g
Reduced sodium, less sodium, lower sodium	At least 25% less per RACC than an appropriate reference food; must state the reference food, percent reduction and actual mg comparison; not allowed if the reference food already qualifies as low sodium	At least 25% less per 100 g
Light in sodium, lite in sodium (101.56)	At least 50% less sodium than the reference food	Same test, on a per 100 g basis
Lightly salted (101.56(g))	50% less sodium added than normally added to the reference food; if not low sodium, must say so	Same principle
Salt free	Permitted only if the food also qualifies as sodium free	Same
Unsalted, no salt added, without added salt	No salt added in processing, and the food it resembles is normally processed with salt; if not sodium free, must state that it is not a sodium free food, or not for control of sodium in the diet	Same

The last two claims are frequently misunderstood. "No salt added" and "unsalted" are process claims rather than sodium-level claims.

They do not tell the consumer how much sodium the food contains. That is why the regulation requires a disclaimer when the product is not sodium free.

A no-salt-added canned bean containing naturally occurring sodium can legitimately be a no-salt-added product while still not qualifying as a low sodium food.

Run any proposed sodium claim through the claim validator before placing it on finished artwork.

Sodium on the Nutrition Facts panel: Daily Value and rounding

The sodium Daily Value is 2,300 mg for adults and children 4 and older.

For children 1 through 3, it is 1,500 mg. This matters when labeling toddler food because the same amount of sodium in milligrams produces a substantially larger %DV. Infant labels carry no sodium %DV at all.

Rounding under 21 CFR 101.9(c)(4) uses three bands:

• Less than 5 mg: Declare 0 mg.
• 5 to 140 mg: Round to the nearest 5 mg.
• More than 140 mg: Round to the nearest 10 mg.

The %DV is calculated against 2,300 mg and rounded to the nearest whole percent.

The boundary at 140 mg is not accidental. It aligns with the low sodium claim threshold, giving products close to a claim decision finer rounding resolution.

The DV calculator handles sodium rounding and percentage calculations together, while the FDA Daily Value chart explains where the 2,300 mg value comes from.

Why voluntary sodium reduction targets still matter commercially

Voluntary does not necessarily mean commercially irrelevant. Two forces can turn FDA's targets into something that operates much like a specification.

The first is procurement. Retailers and institutional buyers increasingly put sodium ceilings into supplier specifications, and FDA's category figures provide an obvious reference because they are public, category-specific and neutral.

A target that FDA cannot enforce can therefore become a requirement that a customer enforces through a contract.

The second is the proposed front-of-package rule. Sodium is one of the three nutrients in the proposal, alongside saturated fat and added sugars. Each nutrient would carry an interpretive term:

• Low: 5% DV or less.
• Med: 6% to 19% DV.
• High: 20% DV or more.

For sodium, that places the High line at 460 mg or more per serving and the Low line at 115 mg or less.

Nothing about that box is currently in force. FDA leadership also signaled in March 2026 that significant changes, including a possible re-proposal, remain on the table.

Still, the proposal shows which side of 460 mg a formulator would prefer to be on, and reformulating twice is more expensive than reformulating once.

See the FDA front-of-package nutrition label proposal for the rulemaking, and what counts as high sodium on a nutrition label for the consumer-facing version of the same arithmetic.

A practical check against FDA sodium reduction targets

Checking where your product sits takes four steps.

1. Find the correct subcategory. With 163 subcategories, close is not good enough. A product that could plausibly fit two categories may face different targets. Choose the category that matches how the food is formulated and sold, and document why.
2. Convert your sodium data to mg per 100 g. Divide sodium in milligrams by the food weight in grams, then multiply by 100. Use the unrounded analytical amount, not the rounded Nutrition Facts declaration.
3. Compare with the upper bound first, then the mean. The upper bound tells you whether an individual product is an outlier. The sales-weighted mean is a category-level goal, so a single product above it is not necessarily a problem, particularly for a small producer whose sales barely affect the category average.
4. Run nutrient content claim tests separately. Meeting an FDA category target does not mean your product qualifies for "low sodium." The systems use different denominators: per 100 g for the targets versus per RACC for the claim.

Reformulation levers

Your options are limited, and each can have labeling consequences.

• Stepwise salt reduction. Gradually reducing sodium across production runs is the standard approach and does not change another label element by itself.
• Partial replacement with potassium chloride or other mineral salts. This changes the ingredient statement and, at meaningful levels, the potassium declaration. Potassium is mandatory on the current panel, so this is a relabeling event rather than only a formulation change.
• Reworking sodium-bearing functional ingredients. Sodium comes from leavening agents, phosphates, preservatives and flavor systems as well as salt. In some products, these sources contribute more sodium than the added salt and can be easier to reduce without perceived flavor loss.
• Do not use serving size as a workaround. Serving sizes are established through RACC under 21 CFR 101.12. See FDA serving size requirements. You cannot simply shrink a serving to improve the sodium declaration, and the per-100 g sodium targets are unaffected by serving-size changes anyway.

Once your sodium figure is settled, the panel is the straightforward part. Build the Nutrition Facts label with the correct sodium rounding and %DV using the label generator, then check any sodium claim against the current 101.61 definitions with the claim validator before sending artwork to print.

FDA sodium reduction targets frequently asked questions

Are the FDA sodium reduction targets mandatory?

No. The sodium reduction targets are voluntary FDA guidance. Phase I is final guidance issued in October 2021, while Phase II remains draft as of September 2026. Exceeding a category target does not make a food misbranded. The sodium declaration on the Nutrition Facts panel and sodium claim definitions in 21 CFR 101.61 are separate binding requirements.

Has the low sodium threshold changed to 115 mg?

No. The binding definition of "low sodium" remains 140 mg or less per RACC. The 115 mg figure appears in the proposed front-of-package rule, which would align the claim with the proposed 5% DV Low band. That proposal has not been finalized, so 115 mg currently has no legal effect.

What is the FDA sodium reduction targets 2026 status?

As of September 2026, Phase I remains the operative FDA guidance and Phase II, or Edition 2, remains draft. FDA states that Edition 2 will replace Edition 1 once finalized, but no finalization date has been announced. Sodium targets also do not appear among FDA's 2026 Human Foods Program priority deliverables or its 2026 guidance agenda.

Does hitting a category target let me say my product is low sodium?

No. FDA category targets are expressed in milligrams per 100 g, while the "low sodium" claim is generally evaluated per RACC, with a per 50 g test when the RACC is 30 g or less or 2 tablespoons or less. Meals and main dishes use a per 100 g test. Meeting one standard does not establish compliance with the other.

Do the FDA sodium reduction targets cover restaurant food?

Yes. Both editions address commercially processed, packaged and prepared foods, and Phase II explicitly covers restaurant-prepared foods across its 163 subcategories. The scope reflects FDA's rationale that more than 70 percent of sodium intake comes from commercially processed, packaged and prepared foods rather than primarily from salt added by consumers.