The Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in collaboration with other government agencies has a program to track changes in the sodium content of commercially processed and restaurant foods. This monitoring program includes these activities:

Tracking sodium levels of ~125 popular foods, called "Sentinel Foods," by periodically sampling them at stores and restaurants around the country, followed by laboratory analyses. Tracking levels of "related" nutrients that could change when manufacturers reformulate their foods to reduce sodium; these related nutrients are potassium, total and saturated fat, total dietary fiber, and total sugar. Sharing the results of these monitoring activities to the public periodically in the Sodium Monitoring Dataset and USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference and once every two years in the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies.

The Sodium Monitoring Dataset is downloadable in Excel spreadsheet format. Resources in this dataset:Resource Title: Data Dictionary. File Name: SodiumMonitoringDataset_datadictionary.csvResource Description: Defines variables, descriptions, data types, character length, etc. for each of the spreadsheets in this Excel data file: Sentinel Foods - Baseline; Priority-2 Foods - Baseline; Sentinel Foods - Monitoring; Priority-2 Foods - Monitoring.Resource Title: Sodium Monitoring Dataset (MS Excel download). File Name: SodiumMonitoringDatasetUpdatedJuly2616.xlsxResource Description: Microsoft Excel : Sentinel Foods - Baseline; Priority-2 Foods - Baseline; Sentinel Foods - Monitoring; Priority Foods - Monitoring.