This past week, the Food & Drug Administration held a hearing on whether to regulate salt as a food additive under federal law. The hearing was held in response to a petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The Washington Post reports:
A consumer group prodded the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to regulate salt as a food additive, arguing that excessive salt consumption by Americans may be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths a year.
The government has long placed salt in a "generally recognized as safe" or GRAS category, which grandfathers in a huge list of familiar food ingredients. But in an FDA hearing yesterday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) urged the agency to enforce tougher regulations for sodium.
Doing so "lays the foundation for saving tens of thousands of lives per year," said CSPI Director Michael Jacobson in an interview after the hearing. It "just has tremendous potential to health and to cut health-care costs."
"After 25 years of inactivity, the FDA is taking the salt issue seriously," Jacobson said. "They're really gathering information . . . and getting an earful from all sides."
UPDATE: Katharine Van Tassel has more at BioLaw here. Among other things, she ponders whether revoking salt's GRAS status could have implications for sugar.
Maybe the FDA should focus on lowering the food content of food instead of the salt content?
Also, imagine if the FDA could solve both the obesity and the salt problems! An extra 400,000 people per year! The FDA would single-handedly be responsible for a 0.13% increase in the national population every year! (The obvious flaw in this conclusion is indicative of a big problem with "xx causes yy deaths a year" type of statistics.)
Pass the tortellini alla prosciutto.
Yay, I think you've got an issue where we're not going to accuse each other of being improper libertarians. Here's the political side:
Cut-out-the-salters: H Clinton, Huckabee, Biden
Free salters: Doc Paul
Sometime free-salter, sometimes not: Romney
Let's find a way to bring both sides together: Obama
It's a Diamond Crystal conspiracy: Edwards, Kucinich
It's an islamic/immigrant plot: Giuliani, Tancredo
Nothing on point: Fred!
Don't know how Dodd &McCain fit in.
If you develop hypertension, a low sodium diet is one tool to help you control your hypertension.
Also, a high sodium diet does not cause hypertension.
So, I should be willing to allow the FDA to control the amount of sodium in my diet because someone else with a disease has a problem? Where is the sense in that?
I don't mind labeling requirements so that low-sodium dieters can make informed choices.
There is no official cause of death for 'high-sodium diet'. The CSPI is playing fast and loose with statistics to come up with the 100,000 deaths anyway. My question is, if this is a legitimate cause of death, what category of death will this 100,000 people be moved to? Because they are going to die. Maybe not this year, but eventually they will die. We all have to die of something, so what types of death are appropriate in the CSPI's opinion?
I am a volunteer EMT. I have watched many many old people die of all sorts of things. Basically, if you live long enough, your body starts to break down in all sorts of different ways and none of it is very pleasant to think about.
A stroke at 63 from high blood pressure might be a lot better way to die than drowning from Congestive Heart Failure at 83. Your mileage might vary
But you don't die, at least not the people in my extended family. For years and years, you live in a nursing home or in a wheelchair, unable to speak intelligibly. THEN you die.
I don't see the constituency for oversalted food. High sodium foods taste leaden to me now: soups, tomato juice, V-8 juice. If I eat a Burger King whopper for lunch (100% of the day's allotment, if I remember correctly), I have a headache all afternoon. Yet food without the teaspoon of added salt per pint of liquid costs much more. I end up saving chicken trimmings and making my own broth. The turkey carcass is a godsend: just add water and heat.
Much of this preventive medicine info was not available when I was a young man.
Salt is used by commercial food preparers as a way to extend shelf life of the product, nothing more, nothing less. I still don't know why I have to pay more for a can of soup with LESS salt than I do for the regular one.
Reader Don Miller above thinks dying fast at 63 is better than dying slow at 83. I'm 66- no thank you.
Hmmm...the soup with less salt can sit, say, for period X on the shelf before it goes bad when, with a little extra salt, it could have sat on the shelf for a period of X + Y. Assuming the cost of the extra salt is trivial compared to the sales lost as a result of the shortening of the shelf-life by period Y, how could anyone not understand that the soup producer would necessarily have to charge more for the less-salted soup than for the salted soup. Duh.
As for me, the government can pry my Mickey Mouse salt shaker from my cold, dead hands.
EI
If I wanted a teaspoon of salt, I'd unscrew the top and pour. There are enough pranksters who unscrew the top and leave it unscrewed in restaurants that it's good practice to check before shaking.
Also shakers with wide and/or numerous holes are readily available.
The constituency is the folks who like lots of salt on their food. They're quite common, so if you don't see them, perhaps your eyes or observation skills are deficient.
BTW - They don't think of it as "oversalted".
And no, they don't have an obligation to live what you feel is a heathly lifestyle. If you feel that their failings are costing you money, you shouldn't insist on spending said money on them.
Obviously these people lack gumption and moral fibre. Rather than salt to their own taste, they meekly accept whatever salt level Big Sodium chooses to give them. Such people are weak, despicable, hardly the stuff of America's greatness.
Stand up for yourselves! Take control of the salt in your food!
Increasing shelf life may be a primary reason for adding NaCl to some foods (such as perhaps butter or dried meats). However, I suspect in many cases (such as canned or frozen preprepared foods) the primary reason for adding NaCl is to enhance flavor.
McCarron, D.A. Diet and Blood Pressure--The Paradigm Shift
Science 281 (5379), 933, August 1998
The simple fact is that despite decades of placing patients on low-salt diets there is a distinct lack of clinical evidence that such a diet reduces hypertension.
CSPI are the modern day Puritans.
um, no.
a primary way to DIE is to remove salt from the blood stream. well, sodium anyway, but you get the point. nothing more "enlightening" than a bunch a lawyers discussing medicine. :l really. amazing. ...
i hope you are not dispensing medical advice. somebody could DIE!!! :)
fwiw, i marshalled a race once where somebody died of hyponatremia. it happens.
sodium is not "bad." too MUCH sodium is bad. what is TOO MUCH varies for a # of reasons, but i am so sick and tired of CSPI (and other nanny agencies) trying to affect my free choices.
this is much like the obesity thang. people with discipline can still eat at mcdonald's, etc. and not get obese. it's not mcdonald's fault.
a person who exercises frequently, for example thrives on (often) MORE sodium than what the RDA is. the RDA is based on (flawed) study involving sedentary males iirc. it doesn't take into account all sorts of factors. i eat 4-6 times the RDA of protein for instance. why? because my situation makes that level optimal. i am waiting for CSPI to come along and ban protein powders (note that canada, unlike the US is much more restrictive in banning and restricting food supplements. are we next?)
"CSPI is playing fast and loose with statistics" Say it ain't so, Joe! That's their MO, right along with scare tactics. It works, though, at least so far as it goes toward paying CSPI salaries.
Tony Tutin: You appear to have a genetic disposition that puts you at risk with salt. It would appear to be wise to avoid excess salt in your diet.
I, on the other hand, have no such disposition. I can salt my food whenever I like. And living in hot climates, where I perspire copious amounts of water, salt helps me retain water to further my well-being. So keep your hands off other people's salt, please. Your problem is not everyone's problem. I have no longing for the return of the Nanny I outgrew at age 8.
Tomorrow, Dihydrogen Monoxide.
As Jefferson put it in Notes on the State of Virginia, Ch. 17:The FDA needs an institutional emetic.
I don't think the salt issue is necessarily analogous, but I'm more willing to give regulation a shot.
So you're saying you take their statistics with a grain of ... oh, never mind.
In that case, you'll all be ecstatic once they're alcohol-free, too.
You can step outside for a smoke. It takes 5 minutes.
The real question is, if many people prefer it this way, why were there no smoke-free bars?
Your request lacks any persuasive force, because you have apparently abandoned control of your salt intake to restaurants and food processors. Say rather, "I LIKE being forced to eat high sodium foods! I don't WANNA have a choice about how much salt I eat!"
How does medicine help control high blood pressure?
Medicines called antihypertensives lower high blood pressure. Some, called diuretics or "water pills," rid the body of excess fluids and salt (sodium).
The American Heart Association Nutrition Committee says that to maximize the beneficial effects of a healthy diet on blood pressure,
* Don't eat a lot of sodium (salt).
* Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and fat-free and low-fat dairy products.
Smoking was once socially acceptable and now is less and less so. When I was a kid there were no smoke-free anythings, except maybe department stores. Being dragged around by my mom and dad, there were smoke-filled bars and restaurants, bowling alleys and beauty parlors, gas stations and hardware stores. I had a barber once who would take a drag on his cigarette, clip and snip, take another drag, clip and snip, until he finished both his smoke and my head.
This is nothing to joke about. Did you know that dihydrogen monoxide is the primary cause of drowning deaths in this country?
How does the word "forced" apply? Am I forced to eat high sodium foods whenever the majority of my most convenient options for eating out involve doing so?
(On the basis of the "moral fibre" post I suspect TT has tongue planted firmly in cheek, but I'm happy to play along.)
No, you still have a choice. My concern is that the choices available don't actually reflect the choices that most people would want to have available, and (if that's the case), I wonder why that is. Which is not to say that regulation is going to fix it.
Your response is a non sequitur. Not only do I experience no duress to eat such foods, I also suffer no ill effect from the level of salt the restaurants or food processors use.
I have plenty of choice, starting with the determination of which restaurants I frequent and which foods I buy. If I find a particular product not to my liking, due to too much or too little salt, say, or too much or too little spice, I'm free to go elsewhere, to buy something else.
You also begin with a demonstrably false assumption. While there may be too much salt for you, there's not for me. The restaurants I frequent use an acceptable amount of salt to my taste. With my blood pressure at 116/90, there's no problem with hypertension.
As noted above, you appear to have difficulty in processing salt, for whatever reason. I, and most others, do not. While 'majority rules' is not an absolute, neither should 'lowest common denominator' determine all matters of choice.
You need to use the more scientifically accurate term hydrogen hydroxide. All of you hydrogen hydroxide opponents need to read up on the facts. If handled properly and in the right amounts hydrogen hydroxide can be beneficial to people and to the environment. While some hydrogen hydroxide is created as a byproduct of industrial production much of it occurs naturally just like sodium chloride and if used in limited amounts does not harm people.
Are you kidding? With a diastolic pressure of 90? Get your butt down to a doctor asap.
The American Heart Association recommends this as optimal. 120–139/80–89 is considered prehypertension. Systolic blood pressure of 140 or higher or diastolic pressure of 90 or higher is considered high and should be evaluated by a physician immediately. If your blood pressure is 140/90 or higher, you’re at high risk for stroke, heart attack and other complications from high blood pressure.
Guilty as charged. But I do wish a can of tomato juice didn't automatically contain a teaspoon of salt.
if you do cut way back on salt as I have done for about a year, and you have something like Campbell's tomato soup, then it feels like you're going to have a heart attack there's so much freaking salt in it. what are they hiding that they have to use so much salt?
That's how I feel. I understand that the low-sodium crowd is a minority, but it seems like (making up numbers) if it represents 20% of the population it only has 5% of products marketed towards it.
But yeah, Im biased b/c of my blood pressure.
I agree that restaurant patrons should be able to request traditional high salt versions of dishes if they so choose. But so much salt and msg are just mindlessly thrown into every dish.
and this, like so many other issues comes down to the differences between libertarian (or in my case right moderate with libertarian tendencies) and nannystate ninnies.
it's a matter of principle.
i hate cigarette smoke with every fiber of my soul. detest it. my state (heavily left leaning legislature) passed an absurd smoking ban that affects pretty much EVERY private building (bars, restaurants, etc.) in the state and iirc an area up to 25 ft (or is 50 i forget) from the DOOR of the building which means its effectively illegal on almost any sidewalk.
so, the result is great. i can go places and not smell (and smell like after i leave) cigarette smoke. but so WHAT?
if you believe in principle, we let the MARKET decide. don't like smoke? don't cater businesses that allow smoking and/or choose smoke free bars/restaurants that CHOOSE to ban smoking in THEIR establishments.
this to me is the primary issue differentiating libertarian types from authoritarians of the left or right. the left and right authroritarians will sacrifice principle (especially those of free choice - including the choice to engage in self-harming behaviors like smoking) for a nice result, even when the result means choice is taken away, freedoms are restricted, etc. and that's just plain wrong.
the govt. COULD require that (for example) companies make low sodium versions of their foods available, at equal cost to the higher sodium versions. this might be a nice result. but it's still wrong.
and the FREE individual can choose to make his own frigging soup, with less sodium, or start his own soup company and IMPROVE the market by offering it to others. but not by govt. fiat.
That's how I felt about cigarette smoking in bars. If 50% of people would prefer non-smoking, you'd think there'd be 50% nonsmoking bars. But it didn't seem to work that way. There were 0 nonsmoking bars in my neighborhood. Then the ban, all nonsmoking, making many people happy, and few people unhappy (stepping outside to smoke is not that much of an imposition)
I don't know if it's just that the market is slow to respond, or what it is I'm missing.
Markets aren't as magically efficient as Econ 101 says they are. If all the company heads in a particular field follow the same conventional wisdom, none of them will take advantage of market opportunities that the conventional wisdom says won't work.
When my area started considering a smoking ban for bars and restaurants, loads of bar owners started complaining that it would drive away all their customers. They were convinced that if smoking patrons couldn't smoke inside, they wouldn't come at all, and that non-smokers wouldn't regard a smoke-free environment as enough of an incentive to make up for it - especially if their smoking friends didn't want to come any more. And yet, as you say, even many smokers like having smoke-free bars. So it took a "nanny-state" law to show the market that its conventional wisdom was wrong.
economics doesn't work that way. the issue is this - are non-smokers/smoke haters going to patronize a smoking bar to a greater extent than smokers will NOT patronize a non-smoking bar.
it's kind of 50% game theory, and 50 risk/reward analysis.
tacoma did have (at least one) smoke free bar, and i made a point to patronize that same bar, and i would GLADLY pay more for drinks (although that wasn't the case) to go to such bar.
also, many go to bars to meet members of the complementary sex (whichever that may be). single college guys will go where the women are hawt for instance. smoking is a total non-izssue.
but again, it doesn't matter if the free market didn't create smoke free bars - if it DIDN'T (given sufficient time), then clearly the market DOESN'T demand it. so, tuff.
you have no RIGHT to go to a bar that is smoke free. i do support, for instance, public buildings (courthouses, libraries, etc.) being smoke free by law, because they are publically funded, and provide for common govt. services paid for and used etc. for the public good. totally different situation than a private bar.
the vast majority of small businesses (to include bars and restaurants ) fail, and creating a smoke free one was/is correctly seen as an added risk. in a LARGE marketplace, it might be a nice niche strategy. but if it doesn't happen, oh well.
the point (for a libertarian ) is that beneficial results (from a results analysis angle) does not justify a process that eliminates such freedom of choice, free market pressures, etc.
and it does NOT take a ""nanny-state" law to show the market that its conventional wisdom was wrong."
*if* it takes a nanny-state law to "show" the market , then that does not justify the nanny state law.
that is just basic libertarian principle.
nobody has a RIGHT to a smoke free bar. you have the right (should have) to RUN a smoke free bar, but if no business owner in your area decides thusly, drink yer frigging beer at home, or man-up and smell like smoke. that's a lot smaller sacrifice than eliminating free choice, the free market, and justifying more govt. intrusion into our choices.
and note that, again, i LOVE the result of the legislation. but the wonderful result is not worth the terrible power we give the govt. (or in this case, the govt. takes from us) to make it possible.
To analogise: thermodynamics tells you what happens; kinetics tells you when it is going to happen. Likewise, the free market will eventually respond.
As for the salt nonsense: too much oxygen is bad for you. Too much protein can cause intestinal problems. Is the government going to start doling out perfectly balanced meals three times a week?
To be serious: most Americans are used to the salt, sugar, and corn syrup content in our food. If they were to taste low-sodium food, or food without sugars, it would taste weird to them. It is much like asking someone used to drinking whole milk to try 1%; their palate simply is not used to it, and it tastes awful. There's no reason for restaurants to decrease the salt content of their foods: their patrons will either season it on their own (thus bringing up the problem PatHMV mentions) or avoid the restaurant entirely (thus, restaurants have a disincentive to act in their patron's best interests). Yes, one possible solution is regulation, so that no one restaurant will be penalised for being a pioneer.
Another solution is to give Americans an economic incentive to eat healthier - i.e. return market forces to health care. If there is an additional cost to eating high-fat, high-salt foods, people will stop doing it if they have to bear that cost. Currently, that cost is externalised on to insurance companies. The other issue is a lack of information: if restaurants were to give diners nutritional information (akin to those found on food labels or fast-food restaurants), diners would have the tools to make an informed decision.
If people would prefer to eat steak, ice cream, and high-salt foods for 63 years instead of healthy rabbit food for 80 years, should we not let them do that? I've known quite a few people who say that they know that vegetarianism is healthier than the typical American diet, but wouldn't trade the meat for an extra few years of life. It's a given that we are all going to kick the bucket. What is not a given is that we will enjoy the intervening years, or even be able to live them in a free state.
FWIW, if we are sharing: my blood pressure is about 90/55.
"Doctor, if I eat a vegetarian diet, will I live longer?"
"Well, it'll certainly seem longer!"
I would note there are religious practices and the like that involve salt.
the public is merely a group of PEOPLE.
individuals are the only ones who can control (ultimately) what goes into their mouths. regardless of what govt. does to TRY to make healthier food choices mandatory (realizing that sodium is NOT bad, and too much sodium for one person is not too much for another, especially depending on what else they ate for the day, their exercise level, etc.), it should be, and it actually is, an individual choice.
the libertarian would say, if you want to eat healthily (lord knows i am pretty frigging obsessive about it myself), then EAT A HEALTHY DIET, but don't tell a restaurant owner, or a food producer, etc. how much salt they can put in their products. mandatory LABELING (so the consumer can make informed decisions) - fine. telling companies how much salt they can use - NOT fine.
regardless, of what the majority wants, let alone a regulatory agency.
despite what you claim, it si NOT the legislature's job to dictate menus to restaurants or to food producers.
Ugly, but a trend that began with ostensibly more noble purposes now turned to an addiction and way of life.
Next, butter and margarine. Without the force of government they would be dismissed as hopeless cranks, but we wanted government to be an agency for reform and now can't get the beast back into the closet.
The smoke-free bar law was enacted not for the benefit of the smoker but the others and is therefore no more a nanny-state law than any other law that bans an activity bad for others.
Also, it's a little silly even from a libertarian perspective to complain about a mild restriction on cigarette smoking when you can be thrown in jail for smoking any other drug.
Won't work with me.
I've had high blood pressure, very high cholesterol and heart disease since my mid-twenties. For thirty years I was on a lo-fat, lo-cholesterol, lo-sodium diet, and was relatively compliant. In my fifties, I developed type 2 diabetes. In my early sixties, I had a cholesterol assay perfected by Berkely Labs. It showed I had an unusual genetic problem which caused my body to manufacture a particularly destructive extra low density lipoprotein which, in turn, caused my disease and exacerbated my high blood pressure. The cure? Switch to a normal balanced diet with niacin and folic acid supplements, and lipitor. I continue a generic beta blocker, since I had by-pass surgeries at age 40 and 51, and numerous angioplasties therafter.
The point of all of this is that I ate a typical heart disease diet for 30 years. It was precisely the wrong kind of diet for me, and probably led to my diabetes.
Most sophisticated doctors now know that with medicine one size doesn't fit all.
Too much salt for some might not be too much for others.
The main problem is that many people want the market to offer options like smoke-free bars and low-sodium processed foods, but aren't willing to suffer the inconvenience of convincing the market to introduce them. Faced with a choice between buying a can of high-sodium chicken broth or taking the time and trouble to save up chicken scraps and boil up their own broth, the average person who works full-time (to say nothing of having kids to take care of) is going to go for the quick and easy can. From that point of view, voting for the government to restrict salt in processed food just makes sense.
This may be true. It's just that I hate the use of the word "carcass" in connection with something I'm going to eat.
Different poster:
Proving once again that there is no VC topic whatsoever that cannot be turned into an opportunity to bash homosexuals. This includes threads about salt.
CSPI is just pushing the usual "progressive" anti-Israel agenda, this time by seeking to reduce Israel's profits from Dead Sea salt production.
Most people have good sodium transport systems. (Where is the scientific proof for the assertion that we evolved with poor sodium handling abilities? While there are some people who are genetically susceptible to getting hypertension, black men, especially, it is not a universal human condition.) Thus they are able to handle the amounts of salt found in most foods today. Besides, the sodium content of all processed food sold in on the packaging somewhere, assuming you can figure it out. If you are on a salt restricted diet, do your homework.
Contrasting smoking bans and sodium bans seems like a waste of time to me. Smoking is clearly a risk to health. Second hand smoke may also be dangerous and the proof is a lot better than the so-called proof that sodium causes essential hypertension. In any case, to a non-smoker, second hand smoke is annoying like loud noises, fetid odors, and barking dogs. There ought to be a law against it anyway. Even if it does not effect health. There is no annoying component to salt.