UFood Restaurant Group, Inc. (OTCBB: UFFC) announced that the company has reduced sodium by 20 percent in all of its breaded chicken menu items as part of the company's core focus on continuing to offer customers at its urban, airport, hospital and military base locations food that is nutritionally sound and great tasting.
These menu items include the Crispy Chicken Chopped Cobb Salad, Chicken Parmigiana Wrap, and the kids' Oven Crisped Chicken Fingers Meal.
All of UFood's breaded chicken items are baked, not fried.
For more than a decade, restaurant companies have been exploring ways to reduce the sodium content in food. However, a report by Technomic indicates many restaurant prepared meals have more sodium than ever.
"As a restaurant company that is committed to nutrition, sodium is one of many things that we focus on," says UFood CEO George Naddaff.
"Our new breaded chicken products offer consumers great taste and reduced sodium levels, both of which are important to our brand. We will continue to innovate and update our menu items as we develop new products that deliver on both our nutrition and flavor requirements."
The National Salt Reduction Initiative (NSRI), is an unprecedented public-private partnership developed to guide salt reductions in 62 categories of packaged food and 25 categories of restaurant food.
The NSRI reports the United Kingdom has reduced sodium levels by 40 percent or more in some products. Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Ireland, and New Zealand have also launched initiatives to help reduce the salt in food.
"UFood fully supports NSRI's vision and initiative," Mr. Naddaff says.
"Sodium reduction is just one of UFood's many initiatives to bring consumers food that is great tasting and nutritionally sound. These two principles combined with our proactive attitude in creating healthier convenient food choices for consumers are factors that have allowed us to expand into channels like hospitals and military bases."
UFood is a supporter of HealthCorps, a proactive health movement co-founded by heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and his wife Lisa, which is fighting obesity by getting American students and communities across the country to take charge of their health.