Posted on 06/18/2014 6:07:09 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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 of mandatory limits,” said Center for Science in the Public Interest Executive Director Michael Jacobson. (RELATED: Do our diets have to be progressive too?)
The health effects of reduced sodium diets are hotly debated, and in fact low sodium consumption may even threaten the health of those with congestive heart failure, according to a May 2013 study by the Institute of Medicine — the same NGO that’s been pressuring the FDA to crack down on salty food.
Health and science writer Gary Taubes, writing for The New York Times in 2012, explained that “With nearly everyone focused on the supposed benefits of salt restriction, little research was done to look at the potential dangers. But four years ago, Italian researchers began publishing the results from a series of clinical trials, all of which reported that, among patients with heart failure, reducing salt consumption increased the risk of death. Those trials have been followed by a slew of studies suggesting that reducing sodium to anything like what government policy refers to as a ‘safe upper limit’ is likely to do more harm than good.”
The FDA is determined to press forward despite the ambiguous relationship between salt consumption and health, saying that Americans’ sodium levels are “of huge interest and concern” and that they hope to release the guidelines soon.
Former NYC Mayor and notorious “public health” warrior Michael Bloomberg was a trendsetter in this regard, having launched the National Salt Reduction Initiative, “a nationwide partnership to reduce sodium in the U.S. food supply,” in 2008–not that that’s stopped him from being liberal with the shaker on his own food.
As NYT science columnist John Tierney noted way back in 2009, regulatory policy based on unsettled science “makes test subjects of us all.”
Just like Clinton wanting to ban running because it releases endorphins in your brain to give you a high. A runners high.
Now that Obama has pretty much shut down oil drilling and the coal mines he is moving on to shutting down the salt mines.
People will be selling salt on the black market like heroin and cocaine.
I am a 69 year old salt-a-holic. I am in very good health, and my average BP is 117/75.
Sorry, O. You’ll have to take my salt out of my cold, dead hands......like some other things I own.........
I’ve been a salt addict (a small saltlick a day) for years and never had a problem but the wife got me to cut back. After six months of cutting back my doctor mentioned that some of my electrolytes were a bit low and instructed me to increase my salt intake. The wife couldn’t believe it and has never mentioned salt intake again.
Screw the Nazi bastards.
‘Somewhere I remember when you lose your saltiness you lose your ability to be useful....’
Bible. I defy anyone to eat tomatoes, cantaloupe, or watermelon without salt. This could lose The Big Zero his base. Read somewhere that the word salary comes from salt, the Roman soldiers were paid in salt, hence the phrase, not worth his salt. Or I may have made this up.
I’ll stop eating salt when I again afford to buy real food.
Decades ago they, whoever "they" are, told us that the original artificial sweetener saccharin (sp?) was practically poisonous and should never be consumed by human beings. However, now most, if not all, artificial sweeteners EXCEPT saccharin have supposedly been shone to be deleterious to our health those are the only ones that I ever see listed as ingredients on any sugar free food item on the supermarket shelves.
All of which begs the question, do any of these self-appointed guardians of our health have an everlovin clue as to what is OK for us to consume and what isn't? Until I find an answer to that question I intend to buy and consume only sugar free foods that contain saccharin as the sweetener.
Actually, since a recent and hopefully successful cancer operation I don't try very hard to avoid sugar in my food and drink. Losing a few pounds for the purpose of acquiring the dubious health benefits that advocates of a sugar-free diet promise isn't worth the trouble of making the effort required for a lot of research to determine which food additives are OK and which aren't at a time when I have far more important health care related decisions to make.
That is probably true for most Americans. I just don’t like salt. Never have. Probably never will. A bit of butter with salt on an ear of corn is okay. Nothing more.
Pink Himalayan salt, bought in bulk (for "bathing" doncha know)
I do eat watermelon without salt. Tomatoes only the little orange ones, when just picked out of the garden and still warm from the sun.
I love salt but for some reason on watermelon it just isn't appealing.
You know a cheap, simple, and to the point protest would be ten truckloads of salt dumped in front of the WH.
Gandhi had a connection to salt.
I forgot cucumbers, you get more than enough salt from processed foods anyway. I rarely eat anything with salt added. Look on the labels at the amount of salt in processed food and there is a ton of it. It is even in sweetened cereals. On the four foods I mentioned I must have salt. The WH puts out these ridiculous ideas merely to keep us looking at the right hand while the left(root of the word, sinister), does something much worst. Distraction, sleight of hand.
Please, sir, may I still drink water?
Go pound salt, O’Bastards.
You must be getting ahold of some good watermelons, the ones in this area need salt. The tomatoes must be heirloom, thinner skinned and sweeter. Course anything you grow yourself are always better.
Yet the Obama administration demands we swallow so much bullshitit!
I was hospitalized for syncope (causes random blackouts
when standing due to sudden blood pressure drops)... among other things
my body was
losing salt. The politically correct hospital dietitian placed me on a salt-free diet until my cardiologist finally got their attention. In reality excess salt is fairly easy for the body to get rid on.
Watermelon time is not until July around here but my southern relatives were kind enough to bring me some from their gardens to tide me over.
So sweet and juicy.
I think I will go have another quarter.
My neighbor in Des Plaines had a sewer line rupture behind his house. The following spring you could trace the line by the huge tomato plants that grew in over it. He told me that tomato seeds are still quite viable after passing thru the human digestive system.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.