Benny stock cube recall highlights need for clear labelling amidst high sodium consumption

South Africans consume almost double the recommended daily amount of salt, which highlights the urgent need for accurate, trustworthy food labels.

On 21 August 2025 the National Consumer Commission (NCC) announced a recall of Benny beef and chicken stock cubes due to incorrect salt labelling. The affected batches have been on shelves since 2023 and carry a best-before date of 31 July 2027.

The consumer watchdog, in a statement, said the sodium content in the product may be higher than was shown on the packaging. The National Consumer Commission and Tiger Brands did not receive a complaint from consumers — this was a voluntary recall.

The commission pointed out that this may affect consumers’ ability to make informed dietary choices, especially those monitoring their sodium intake for health reasons. Consumers are urged to return the products to their point of purchase for a full refund or a coupon. 

Matlou Setati, Executive: Food Safety and Sustainability Initiative at the Consumer Goods Council SA, told Daily Maverick that: “The decision by Tiger Brands to voluntarily recall Benny flavoured stock cubes is welcomed from a food safety and nutrition perspective as it demonstrates commitment to ensuring correct nutritional labelling on food products. Food manufacturing companies need to adhere to the highest standards of food safety, and where a recall is warranted it is always commended and recommended as this protects consumers.”  

The global mean intake of adults is 4,310mg/day sodium (equivalent to 10.78g/day salt) (1). This is more than double the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) recommendation for adults of less than 2,000mg/day sodium (equivalent to less than 5g/day salt, or approximately one teaspoon).

The WHO also estimates that more than 1.89 million deaths each year are associated with high sodium intake.

‘Need for clear front-of-pack labels’

Daily Maverick spoke to public health experts who said that this issue highlighted the need for clear front-of-pack labels and better consumer education. 

They said that this recall was not just about one product — it was a reminder that South Africa urgently needs stronger monitoring systems, truthful labelling, and corporate accountability to protect public health.  

“It also underscores the need for the government to move quickly on implementing the Health Promotion Levy expansion and labelling regulations, both of which could help reduce the country’s burden of diet-related diseases,” said Bilal Mpazayabo, the social media and communication coordinator at the Healthy Living Alliance (Heala). 

The alliance said that for many consumers, especially in lower-income communities, nutritional information on the back of a pack was difficult to interpret or may not even be read at all. This was why the alliance continued to call for clear front-of-pack warning labels that were simple, visible, and understandable at a glance. Consumers should not need a science degree to know whether a product was high in salt, sugar or saturated fat. Front-of-pack labels empowered people to make healthier choices quickly and fairly, and they helped protect children and other vulnerable groups from misleading packaging.

However, if a consumer had already consumed the stock cubes, they would have little recourse, the alliance said.

“Unfortunately, in South Africa there is very little practical recourse for ordinary consumers who may have unknowingly consumed a recalled product. While companies often focus on removing stock from shelves, the burden of risk still lies with consumers who may already have been exposed. This points to a broader issue of corporate accountability and the need for stronger regulation and enforcement to ensure food companies put people’s health first, not just profits,” Mpazayabo said. 

Dr Sameera Mahomedy, a senior researcher in health law and policy at PRICELESS SA, spoke to Daily Maverick about the role better consumer education and clearer food labels could play in reducing salt intake.

Mahomedy said research had shown that excess sodium raised blood pressure and had also been linked to driving heart attacks and strokes. So it was a massive issue for non-communicable diseases. 

Risk

“The issue is also that for most people, the risk or what makes the risk worse is this idea of hidden salt, often found in processed foods like stock cubes, for example, but also in other snacks and then more unassuming products like breads even, for example.”

Mahomedy said hidden salts made it difficult for people to control intake through personal choice. 

“Generally in the non-communicable disease public health space, we obviously avoid focusing on personal choice and try to focus more on the commercial determinants of health, and the way these businesses and industries are actually shaping health outcomes. But they like to externalise the harm onto the individual to say that, well, you know, people should just eat better. But that is just, I think, severely inaccurate,” said Mahomedy. 

Mahomedy holds an LLB, an LLM (cum laude) and a PhD in law from the University of Stellenbosch. PRICELESS SA is a research-to-policy unit that provides evidence, methodologies and tools for effective decision-making in health. The unit has done extensive research on the potential impact of nutritional information being on the front of a product, printed bigger and in simpler terms so that everyone could understand what they were eating.

“I think it’s important to  emphasise that no complaints doesn’t mean that there’s no problem. And it really speaks to this issue of why we need front-of-pack warning labels. From a consumption perspective, consumers won’t be able to detect extra sodium just by taste, especially when it’s a pre-packaged, ultra-processed food where there are a lot of other ingredients, flavourants and all of those types of things. It might be difficult just from taste to be like, ‘Oh, this has extra salt.’ And people normally also trust labels as well and assume that what they are being told is correct,” said Mahomedy.

She added that the issue of labelling and understanding what was in your food was compounded by various inequalities, especially in South Africa, but even globally within food systems. 

“So on the one hand, you have issues around low-income groups and households often having less access to fresh, unprocessed, low-salt foods, and there’s normally a heavier reliance on processed, prepackaged, ultra-processed foods as well. There’s also the issue around food literacy. So that’s one of the reasons governments, especially in South Africa, but also worldwide, should and are pursuing population-level salt reduction policies.”

The Department of Health has published draft Regulations Relating to the Labelling and Advertising of Foodstuffs (R3337), which propose mandatory front-of-pack warning labels. The Healthy Living Alliance, along with their partners in the Food Justice Coalition, have engaged extensively in this process and mobilised more than 13,000 public submissions in support of strong regulations. 

The comment period closed in 2023, and two years later there are no firm timelines around addressing the comments and publishing a final draft. Mahomedy said: “That is a concern, given that it’s been two years.”

Mpazayabo added: “We continue to call on the Department of Health to finalise and implement these regulations urgently, so that incidents like the Tiger Brands recall do not continue to leave consumers in the dark.” DM