Metrohm Announces New Salt Analyser

Metrohm announces a method of direct thermometric titration of sodium in foodstuffs, and is available at a special discounted introductory price. The Salt Titrotherm offers you a complete
working package, for specific, rapid, robust and economical analysis of sodium.

The parameters of each instrument have been optimised to ensure fast, accurate and reproducible results with no fuss. All the keys are locked out to stop any unwanted changes to parameters and results.

Salt (sodium chloride) is an essential ingredient in practically all food for human consumption and, apart from its nutritional and physiological importance, above all, gives the food in question its pleasant taste It is generally known that the salt content in a foodstuff with a certain flavor cannot be reduced beyond a certain extent without losing the characteristic taste and the food being rejected as tasteless.

The regular daily diet of a human being contains approximately 3 to 5 grams salt. This amount is adequate to maintain good health and the physiological activities of the human body Depending on eating habits, salt consumption is, however, often in excess of 10 grams per day.

On the other hand, it is known that excessive salt consumption through food intake can have extremely detrimental effects on the human circulatory system, resulting, above all, in high blood pressure and kidney affections. There is, therefore, an urgent need for a reduction in human salt consumption, not only to cure existing illnesses with a low-salt food diet but also to take preventive measures in healthy human beings.

The content of sodium chloride in food stuffs has been historically determined by titration using a silver electrode. The analysis is a so called precipitation titration with potentiometric detection. The amount of sodium is typically calculated by assuming a 1:1 molar ratio of chloride ions to sodium ions in the food. This is not necessarily the case when common sodium-containing food ingredients, such as sodium benzoate and monosodium glutamate, or chloride-containing ingredients such as potassium chloride, are present in the food matrix—as well as sodium ions that may be present in the food itself.