The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released sweeping new guidance for the food industry to voluntarily reduce sodium in processed, packaged and prepared foods in an attempt to reduce Americans’ consumption.

“The FDA is issuing a final guidance, ‘Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods,’ which provides voluntary short-term sodium reduction targets for food manufacturers, chain restaurants and foodservice operators for 163 categories of processed, packaged and prepared foods,” the agency announced.

This guidance is intended to provide measurable voluntary short-term (2.5-year) goals to reduce excess sodium intake, while recognizing and supporting the important roles sodium plays in food technology and food safety.

ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said the news from acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock and Susan T. Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, “could be the biggest, most important intervention in a generation for public health.”

“The new guidance from the FDA [is] really targeting the food industry here,” Ashton said Wednesday on “GMA.”

The current salt intake recommendation of 3,000 milligrams per day is now set to a long-term goal of 2,300 milligrams a day over the next two and a half years.

“Right now, it is clear that diet is a major contributing factor to not only our obesity, but high blood pressure, which, of course, then increases the risk for heart attack [and] strokes,” Ashton said.

“Sodium is widely present in the American diet (most commonly, but not exclusively, as a result of eating or drinking foods to which sodium chloride, commonly referred to as “salt,” has been added),” according to the FDA. “More than 70% of total sodium intake is from sodium added during food manufacturing and commercial food preparation.”

“There is a lot of attention on sodium and for good reason, but I think for people wanting to take charge of this themselves, they can start doing this. They don’t have to wait for the food industry to intervene so read labels, for sure, because there is a lot of hidden sodium in almost everything we consume,” Ashton said. “Use spices in place of salt, that can definitely help and then people focus on the sodium but if you also focus on potassium-rich food, increasing the consumption of that, you can lower your blood pressure from three to five points.”