Sodium Content of Restaurant Foods: Publishing Trends

Globally, the sodium content in diets often exceeds the recommended levels set by health organizations like the WHO. The restaurant industry substantially impacts sodium intake, as eating out frequently exposes consumers to meals with higher sodium content than home-cooked ones. A range of laws and regulations exist globally related to the sodium content of food sold by restaurants; most of these are labeling-oriented. Some restaurant operators have undertaken efforts to reduce the sodium levels in their offerings. Despite these efforts, achieving global sodium reduction targets remains a challenge. A bibliometric analysis of research articles published in the Scopus database between 1970 and 2023 that focused on the sodium content of restaurant foods was performed. A total of 119 scholarly articles were identified. The top five greatest number of articles were published by the United States, China, United Kingdom, Canada, and South Korea. The U.S. National Institutes of Health provided funding for the greatest number of these studies, followed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S.). Journals with more than five of these articles published in them are focused on science and medicine topics, none were categorized as hospitality or restaurant industry journals. The data were also used to create a keywords co-occurrence network map of articles with restaurants and sodium in the title and keywords using the VOSviewer program. In summary, this study identifies research trends, influential publications, primary funding agencies, and gaps in the current knowledge needed to identify strategies to reduce the amount of sodium consumed by restaurant patrons.