Campbell's kid-oriented soups, which feature characters such as Dora the Explorer and Batman on the cans, are getting their second sodium reduction in three years, the company said Monday.

This time, the 12 soups for kids will have 480 milligrams per serving, which means the company can legally label them as healthy foods for the first time.

"They'll be down to heart-healthy levels," Douglas Conant, Campbell's president and chief executive, told the Associated Press.

For Campbell, high sodium levels have been a big concern for decades for products that are otherwise generally healthy.

Two years ago, the company began using sea salt to reduce sodium in a number of its products.

The sea salt is being used in a growing number of soups, as well as V8 vegetable juice and SpaghettiO's pasta.

Low sodium is big business

As more people become health conscious, lower-salt soups have become a big business for the world's largest soupmaker. In 2003, it sold $100 million US in reduced-sodium soups.

Now, Campbell says lower-salt soups are bringing in $650 million US a year in
retail sales.

Initially, sodium levels in the kids' soups were brought down by an average of 25 per cent. In 2008, they'll be brought down another 20 per cent.

The company also announced Monday that it is reformulating 36 ready-to-serve soups now called Campbell's Select and renaming them Campbell's Select Harvest.

While they will be lower in sodium, the Select Harvest line cannot be labelled healthy because they will not meet other U.S. government criteria for areas such as fat and
cholesterol.

In all, 48 Campbell's soups are getting makeovers this year, bringing to 85 the total number of soup varieties that have had their sodium reduced since 2006.

Some of the soups being reformulated this year will ship as early as June. All of them are to be widely available by fall, Conant said.