The anti-salt craze: Nearly as crazy as global warming

Let us start by reading an excerpt from the latest expression of the popular wisdom about salt:

Britain's food watchdog was accused last night of endangering the lives of 15,000 people a year after backing down on strict guidelines designed to limit the amount of salt in food. Health campaigners were furious at the decision by the Food Standards Agency to publish revised targets to cut salt in 85 types of food products by 2010. In many cases the agency raised levels after feedback from companies which claimed that they were unable to cut salt in certain products for technical or safety reasons....

The agency said that it still hoped to cut the overall intake of salt per person per day from 10g to 6g within four years. But medical experts said that the new targets meant this would not be met, especially as the targets cannot be imposed on the food industry. If salt intake were cut to 6g per day, it would prevent 70,000 heart attacks and strokes a year, of which 35,000 are fatal. If intake fell only to 8g a day, 15,000 people would die unnecessarily.

"Products like Quavers and Wotsits are still going to be allowed to contain more salt than in seawater," Professor Graham MacGregor, head of cardio-vascular medicine at St George's Hospital, in Tooting, southwest London, said. "If by 2010 we only get salt consumption down to 8g a day then that will result in another 30,000 strokes and heart attacks and some 15,000 will be fatal. The new targets reflect the naked power of the food industry that is just not interested in the health of the people it feeds."


How awful, eh? The wickedness of the food industry explains it all. But wait a moment! Maybe the British regulators know something. Since our blood has about the same saltiness as seawater, the claim that our bodies cannot handle salt safely is absurd. We are in fact very good at it.

Salt has been implicated in raised blood pressure but if that were really a concern, a much more constructive approach would be to add potassium (which lowers blood pressure) to food rather than removing salt. Both are natural food components.

Much more important however is the latest scientific research report in the American Journal of Medicine -- a report which shows that a low salt diet is actually BAD for you. It is a 13 year follow up of 7000 people and it found that in most groups, the lower the salt intake, the higher the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke.

So it is really a puritanical desire to reduce people's pleasures that motivates the anti-salt brigade. They only look at evidence that suits them.

There is a further comment on the scandalous ignoring of science by the anti-salt fanatics here but it is from that awful food industry so don't read it in case it corrupts your brain.

(For more postings from me, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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