Should the nanny state outlaw salt?

According to the NY Times, a doctor's group wants the FDA to classify salt as a "food additive" instead of a substance "generally recognized as safe," thus making it illegal to add too much of it to food.

People should be outraged at this latest attempt to regulate our lives. Mankind managed to survive thousands of years without a government telling us how much salt we're allowed to eat. Furthermore, there's a good chance that the whole "salt is bad for you mantra" is really a big lie.

Comments

[Austrian]

The principled question is, should the government outlaw ANY substance that people wish to ingest in their body.

[JewishAtheist]

How you love to blow things out of proportion. Nobody's talking about outlawing salt or forbidding you from eating too much of it. They're just trying to limit the amount companies can put in the food they sell to people.

Mind you, I'm probably against such a law as much as you are (I think mandatory labelling is sufficient) but let's not get carried away.

Where's your outrage at the companies who put several grams of salt into a crappy product designed to be eaten every day or as often as possible just to make it taste less like cardboard and pad their bottom line? Yes, consumers have a responsibility to monitor their own eating, but shouldn't companies have responsibilities too?

And don't turn this into another global warming fiasco where you find a minority of scientists who think it (salt, in this case) isn't a real problem, and present that as fact. For some large subset of people, salt significantly raises blood pressure. This is a fact, and it's basically undisputed.

When the study subjects with normal blood pressure reduced their sodium intake but still ate a typical high-fat U.S. diet, systolic blood pressure (the top number) went down 6.7 mm. When they ate the low-fat diet but didn't change their sodium intake, systolic blood pressure went down 3 mm. When they did both, blood pressure went down 7.1 mm.

When people with high blood pressure tried the dietary approaches, the results were even more dramatic. Sodium reduction alone lowered blood pressure by 8.3 mm. Going on the low-fat diet alone lowered blood pressure by 5 mm, and together they lowered blood pressure by 11.5 mm.

In comparison, high blood pressure drugs lower mildly elevated blood pressure by about 9 mm, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

CNN

[Spungen]

I hate when I accidentally buy the low-salt version of a product, especially soup. It always sucks. I guess the government wants all our food to taste like that.

[Kathleen Marie]

Haha! Another goody. You can put as much salt on your food as you want to but I prefer to add spices myself, not have a company who is canning the food I am about to purchase do it for me. I limit my salt intake and I think it is rediculous that if I want a can of beans with no salt it usually costs more.

[Austrian]

From the Top 100 ridiculous reasons to justify government force in the marketplace:

#43 I have to pay more for unsalted beans

[dan]

Clealy, these doctors aren't worth their salt.

;-)

[Dan]

Sorry, let me try that again:

Clearly, these doctors aren't worth their salt.

;-)