Free Republic

In the media, the conflict is portrayed as being between Michelle Obama and the food companies. The poor customer wants to do the right thing, but the food companies make it hard. But that’s not how it really works. Sadly, the Wall Street Journal story is behind a pay wall, but a summary is posted at Newser.com: “Fast Food’s New Trend: ‘Stealth Health.’”

The FDA, perhaps still smarting from the recent artisanal cheese kerfuffle, is setting its sights on a bigger target: salt.“The current level of [sodium] consumption is really higher than it should be,” said FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg. That’s why they’re preparing “voluntary guidelines” for the food industry encouraging them to stay below certain salt levels.While the guidelines will initially be voluntary, health groups are lobbying for mandatory standards — lobbying that will only grow more intense if businesses refuse to comply once the standards are released. If businesses don’t go light on the salt “then FDA should start a process...

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his disciples “the salt of the earth.” While the meaning of this expression is clear, its derivation may not be. Roman scholar Pliny the Elder would say: Nil utilius sole et sale–There’s nothing more useful than sunlight and salt. The habitual use of salt is intimately connected with the advance from nomadic to agricultural life. Traditionally, salt is identified with three special qualities… Purity–The Romans believed it to be the purest of substances, since its origin lay in the purity of the sun and sea Preservation–Until the recent advent of refrigeration, salt...

Would you rather sip on unpasteurized milk or a cold glass of soda? Do you prefer Saturday lunch at a fast food joint or a farmers market? Regardless of your choices, your food freedom -- your right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods you want -- is under attack. Here are ten food freedom issues to keep an eye on in 2014. 1: FDA May Ban or Restrict a Growing Number of Food Ingredients. The FDA has proposed banning oils containing trans fats, an ingredient found in foods like coffee creamers and muffins....

The daredevil teen awoke from his sodium-induced coma after three days.A young man who drank a quart of soy sauce went into a coma and nearly died from an excess of salt in his body, according to a recent case report. The 19-year-old, who drank the soy sauce after being dared by friends, is the first person known to have deliberately overdosed on such a high amount of salt and survived with no lasting neurological problems, according to the doctors in Virginia who reported his case. The case report was published online June 4 in the Journal of Emergency Medicine....

The recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report regarding dietary sodium1 has generated considerable interest and debate, as well as misinterpretation by advocates on both sides. Further discussion is necessary to inform the public and the health care community and to inform public health strategies for sodium reduction. CURRENT PUBLIC HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING DIETARY SODIUM Dietary sodium intake averages approximately 3400 mg/d in US adults, far in excess of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommendation of less than 2300 mg/d for those older than 2 years and less than 1500 mg/d for certain high-risk subgroups, including African Americans, individuals with...

A surprising new report questions public health efforts to get Americans to sharply cut back on salt, saying it’s not clear whether eating super-low levels is worth the struggle... --snip-- “We’re not saying we shouldn’t be lowering excessive salt intake,” said Dr. Brian Strom of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the IOM committee. But below 2,300 mg a day, “there is simply a lack of data that shows it is beneficial.” The average American consumes more than 3,400 mg of sodium a day, equivalent to 1 ½ teaspoons. Current U.S. dietary guidelines say most people should limit that to...

On the heels of a study linking sugary drinks to 25,000 U.S. deaths a year, new research suggests salty food is even more dangerous.The new study, by the same Harvard research team, linked excessive salt consumption to nearly 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010. One in 10 Americans dies from eating too much salt, the researchers found.“The burden of sodium is much higher than the burden of sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of both the salt and sugary drink studies. “That’s because sugar-sweetened beverages are just one...

(CNSNews.com) – First lady Michelle Obama is praising what has often been one of the left’s biggest targets, Walmart, for helping to fight obesity and “food deserts” in the United States. “At Walmart, you can believe that as America’s largest retailer, you have an obligation that goes far beyond the bottom line,” Obama said Thursday at a Walmart in Springfield, Mo. “You know that every day, with the products you sell, you’re helping parents get by on a budget -- which is what everybody in this country is trying to do. You’re helping kids get the nutrition they need to...

For decades table salt has been on a healthy heart’s most wanted list. Believing it’s responsible for skyrocketing blood pressure, Americans have banned salt from tables and stripped it from recipes. But new research says salt just might deserve a bit of a reprieve. The link between salt and blood pressure is thought to date back to the 1940s when Duke University researcher Walter Kempner, M.D., became famous for using salt restriction as a means to treat people with high blood pressure. During the next few decades, studies confirmed Kempner’s theory that reducing salt could help reduce hypertension. A Controversy...

THE first time I questioned the conventional wisdom on the nature of a healthy diet, I was in my salad days, almost 40 years ago, and the subject was salt. Researchers were claiming that salt supplementation was unnecessary after strenuous exercise, and this advice was being passed on by health reporters. When I spent the better part of a year researching the state of the salt science back in 1998 — already a quarter century into the eat-less-salt recommendations — journal editors and public health administrators were still remarkably candid in their assessment of how flimsy the evidence was implicating...

Explanation: Bright planets Venus and Jupiter are framed by the National Solar Observatory's McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in this very astronomical scene. The photo was taken at Kitt Peak National Observatory on March 9. A heliostat sits atop the 100 foot high solar telescope tower to focus the Sun's rays down a long diagonal shaft that reaches underground to the telescope's primary mirror. Of course, after sunset shadows were cast and the structure illuminated by light from the nearly full rising Moon. Opened to begin the night's work, the dome housing Kitt Peak's 2.1 meter reflector is included in the frame,...

Simi Valley California was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history in 1959, and the amounts of radiation leaked to the environment and atmosphere were more than 240 times that of the accident at 3-Mile Island. The area is beautiful today, but what still remains from many decades ago?

[snip] Bread and rolls are the No. 1 source of salt in the American diet, accounting for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips. That surprising finding comes in a government report released Tuesday that includes a list of the top 10 sources of sodium. Salty snacks actually came in at the bottom of the list compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Potato chips, pretzels, and popcorn - which we think of as the saltiest foods in our diet - are only No. 10," said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden. Breads...

Last October, embarrassing e-mails leaked from New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene disclosed that officials had stretched the limits of credible science in approving a 2009 antiobesity ad, which depicted a stream of soda pop transforming into human fat as it left the bottle. “The idea of a sugary drink becoming fat is absurd,” a scientific advisor warned the department in one of the e-mails, a view echoed by other experts whom the city consulted. Nevertheless, Gotham’s health commissioner, Thomas Farley, saw the ad as an effective way to scare people into losing weight, whatever its scientific...

Which is more dangerous: dietary salt or the government’s dietary guidelines? A new study confirms some old truths. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 4), reports that among 3,681 study subjects followed for as long as 23 years, the cardiovascular death rate was more than 50 percent higher among those on who consumed less salt. The researchers concluded that their findings, “refute the estimates of computer model of lives saved and health care costs reduced with lower salt intake” and they do not support “the current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction...

CINCINNATI—All those salty snacks available at the local tavern might be doing more than increasing your thirst: They could also play a role in suppressing social anxiety. New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) shows that elevated levels of sodium blunt the body's natural responses to stress by inhibiting stress hormones that would otherwise be activated in stressful situations. These hormones are located along the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls reactions to stress. The research is reported in the April 6, 2011, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. "We're calling this...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is telling half of the U.S. population to drastically cut their daily salt intake. That's the advice to consumers - and the food industry - as the government issues new dietary guidelines, which are the recommendations behind the popular food pyramid. For the first time, the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments, which issue the guidelines every five years, are telling people who are 51 and older, all African-Americans and anyone suffering from hypertension, diabetes or chronic kidney disease to reduce daily sodium intake to little more than half a teaspoon.

My husband bought me some of my favorite soup, Campbell's Cream of Potato. My mouth got all ready and I sipped the first spoon. I spit it back in the bowl. It tasted TERRIBLE! I thought it was spoiled. Nope. Now! With Sea Salt Added! If I wanted sea salt I'd go float in the ocean! I just discovered that they've done the same to Vegetarian Vegetable. No more Campbell's soup for me. And I wrote them to tell them where they can stick their sea salt! I don't buy Healthy Choice soups because they taste awful. So they are...

When we published our first edition of Eat This, Not That: Worst Foods in America back in 2007, we made a lot of restaurant chains very unhappy. But we also made a lot of their attorneys really, really happy, as they soon began earning massive legal fees sending us saber-rattling correspondences on behalf of the food marketers they represented. As 2010 draws to a close, it's time for another walk down the Hall of Restaurant Shame...