Yum! Brands battles sodium reduction head-on

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In a quiet and relatively secretive campaign by Yum! Brands CEO Greg Creed, Taco Bell's fast-food menu contains 15 percent less salt on average since 2009. Yum! Brands - the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC - took on sodium reduction in an effort to adjust their menu items to comply with nutritionist-recommended limits for salt, sugar and fats by the end of 2015. "We have done the right thing. We have done the moral thing," Creed said when asked how Yum! is responding to consumer demand for healthier fare. "What we haven't done is toot our horn. No one out there suspects we have done it because we haven't changed the taste." This is just the tip of the nutrient iceberg. The company plans to reconfigure the nutritional value of its food so that each item lands at or below nutrition limits by 2020. Chief nutrition officer Jonathan Blum's aim is that if customers eat three meals per day, one of the meals at either KFC, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, they can comply with one third of the daily recommended allowances. "We don't want it to be perceptible," Blum said. "We just want to improve ingredients." Read more by clicking: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2015/01/23/taco-bell-reduced-salt-quiet-campaign-greg-creed-says/22236069/