The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends limiting  salt intake to less than five grams of salt per person per day. In Switzerland, the average consumer eats twice that amount. One of the main sources of salt is bread. Since 2009, Migros has cut back the salt content of its bread to promote a healthier diet for the benefit of its customers.

Best of all, reducing the salt content by this small amount in no way diminishes the experience, as the bread will taste the same. At the same time, however, cutting back on salt is a vital contribution to health promotion – which is very much in the spirit of actionsanté, an initiative of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH).

Migros joined this initiative as a partner in May 2009 and since then has seen to a lower salt content in its bread. In total, the company's Jowa bakeries produce 582 types of bread, 95 per cent of which have had a salt content of 1.8 per cent or less since year-end 2009. Across the full range of Migros bread, salt now averages a mere 1.5 per cent per loaf. But this is just the beginning; Migros is reviewing the salt content of other products as well. This is because the high sodium content of foods can cause hypertension in risk groups and so harm people's health.