Posted on 11/14/2010 6:24:52 AM PST by mattstat
What’s better: (A) voluntarily reducing your salt intake, or (B) having the government mandate that you do so? Naturally, if you don’t opt for A, you get B, which we can call the Bloomberg option.
Why reduce salt? Well, there’s a chance—a small one, but non-zero—of exacerbating your high blood pressure, assuming you have that condition, and because of the possibility of exacerbation, you might live a slightly shorter life. Sure, this possibly shorter life you lead will be full of flavor, and the time you spend here will be more savory, but no citizen should choose quality over quantity when it comes to life. Right?
Linda Cobiac spends her days fretting about the amount of salt Australians ingest. She is so worried that she wrote the peer-reviewed paper “Cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce dietary salt intake” in the eminent journal Heart. She and her co-authors conclude that “maybe there is an ethical justification for government to step in and legislate” the amount of salt citizens can buy in their food.
How did they come to this—nowadays, non-remarkable—conclusion? Why, with a computer model. Specifically:
We consider strategies ranging from those that aim to change individual dietary behaviour, to the current programme of incentives for voluntary changes by food manufacturers, to a more paternalistic approach with government legislation of more moderate salt levels in processed foods.
Shouldn’t that have read, in our more sensitive age, maternalistic approach? But never mind...
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
Like the air we breathe, the sun is good for you.
Proof...Our eyes adjust automatically. Our skin "burns" if we get too much. Nature tells you what to do. We don't need government!
I believe the human body is a pretty strong regulator. When I lived down south and ate a lot of seafood, I never salted anything.
And that chocolate you love. For years it was bad and suddenly, it's golden.
LISTEN TO YOUR OWN BODY!!
How about some lead intake for these radicles?? Perhaps the FDA can publish some suggested standards??
Take your own salt with you.
Here you have the ultimate “bread and butter issue”. Quite literally effecting the taste of everyone’s bread and everyone’s butter.
Regulations on salt content would never get passed congress but if congress is bypassed and the rules come down from Obama’s FDA the backlash would be earthshaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_mineral
Examples include calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, zinc, and iodine. ... Dietary sources include table salt (sodium chloride, the main source), ... found to be essential for the utilization of vitamin D and calcium in the body. ...
And that pi$$es off many in government to no end.
“...and the time you spend here will be more savory”, is incorrect.
“Savory” (”umami” is another word for it), is a distinct flavor that we can detect with our taste buds, along with sweet, salty, sour and bitter. It enhances flavors that are not sweet, as sweet tends to interfere with it.
Savory exists in most meats, and is used as a food additive. One form of it found in monosodium glutamate (MSG), which can have side effects with some people. Natural savory is found in anchovies, which is why some people like them on pizza.
But the all time champion of savory is BACON!
Bacon can have SIX different varieties of savory. Which is why many people find it irresistible.
Then we’re even. Many in the governent piss me off to no end.
These salt stories always puzzle me. What is stopping you from adding salt per your own preference ?
Why reduce salt? Well, there’s a chance—a small one, but non-zero—of exacerbating your high blood pressure, assuming you have that condition, and because of the possibility of exacerbation, you might live a slightly shorter life. Sure, this possibly shorter life you lead will be full of flavor, and the time you spend here will be more savory, but no citizen should choose quality over quantity when it comes to life. Right?
This is crap. A year ago I was entirely unconcerned with salt - I loved salt on just about everything and paid no attention, like most people, to my salt intake
But then I started training for a new career direction in health care, and I started paying attention to things like my blood pressure. I'm in my mid-forties, and I found my systolic BP was just a hair under 140 - the lower limit of the danger zone where medication to reduce blood pressure is usually called for.
So I started doing simple things to reduce my salt intake - I cut out most salty snacks and junk food, and started using less salt in cooking and on the table. Made a HUGE difference - my BP dropped to a very healthy 120/70 range, with no other modifications to my diet or lifestyle. I didn't even lose any weight.
High blood pressure is a HUGE problem. I see patients every day whose kidneys have shut down thanks to chronic untreated high blood pressure, and they have to spend 4+ hours a day, 3 or 4 days a week going to dialysis. Others that I see every day have congestive heart failure, also caused by chronic high blood pressure. Many of them are my age or only a little older.
Do you have any idea how much extra burden these sorts of unnecessary and avoidable chronic diseases puts on our health care system? You want to complain about the cost of health insurance premiums? Chronic conditions like this is a HUGE part of the cost.
(COPD caused by smoking is another HUGE one, but that's a subject for another thread)
Once you have developed end-stage renal or heart failure, there is no coming back; your life WILL be shortened. Personally, I don't think the taste of excessive amounts of salt is worth it.
So yeah, even though I don't want the government to step in and try to do silly things like control sodium intake, it DOES piss me off to have to pay exorbitant health insurance rates to subsidize the expensive, long-term care of people who develop chronic health problems thanks entirely to their own crappy choices.
The key word is mandatory.
More from the Institute of Medicine...
May 21, 2009
By Ruth Levine Share
The Twitter version of the IOM report on the U.S. Commitment to Global Health, which was formally released on Wednesday by committee co-chairs Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Harold Varmus, might look something like this:
Thanks for a good decade; don’t slack off now ($15b by 2012). Healthier world = happier, healthier us. It’s more than AIDS. Play nice with others. Get your act together.
That doesn’t quite do justice to more than a year’s worth of work by many (including me, as a committee member). So herewith a summary, adapted from a note prepared by IOM staff, for those with a slightly longer attention span. For the real global health junkies, on Thursday the Kaiser Family Foundation will host a webcast conversation among three panel members (Maria Freire, Jeff Koplan and me, moderated by Jen Kates) (details here.)
After making the case for a focus on global health on the grounds of both a humanitarian impulse and enlightened self-interest, the committee identified five areas for action:
(4) Increase U.S. financial commitments to global health. President Obama’s newly announced Global Health Initiative calls for $63 billion over six years (2009 – 2014) or an average of $10.5 billion per year. The 2010 budget proposal is $8.645 billion. This is heading in the right direction, although not quite up to the ambition of the IOM recommendation: To increase U.S. commitments to global health to $15 billion by 2012, allocated over a range of health programs, including system strengthening.
The IOM committee recommended that the U.S. design a coordinated approach to funding global health research that leverages push mechanisms—research subsidies through the Department of Health and Human Services budget (not included in the $15 billion)—and pull mechanisms—innovative funding for novel vaccine, drug, and diagnostic procurement through the foreign affairs budget (included in the $15 billion).
STOP SPENDING
As far as mandating?...Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
Reading your post I had chills thinking I had accidentally logged into DU. Shudder.
I would think the gov. would love people dying sooner. Less burden on Zer0care/ Social Security.
BTW, my BP runs about 123/70 and I eat all the salt I want.
Hooked on sea salt with a touch of pink salt from the Himalayas.
Why? See, your snarky one-line response is the sort of thing *I* would expect to see on DU.
What's your beef with my post? Am I factually incorrect on anything? Do YOU like subsidizing the unnecessary care of people who inflict themselves with expensive, long-term, chronic conditions, and forcing ME to pay for it as well? That is socialism.
The May 21, 2009 Institute of Medicine article was posted at the Center for Global Development...
Ed Scott co-founded the Center for Global Development (CGD) in 2001 and he serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Mr. Scott is a co-founder, along with Bill Gates and George Soros, of DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa).
Since its inception, the program has been expanded to include other fellows funded by Humanity United, the McCall MacBain Foundation, the Open Society Institute...
http://www.cgdev.org/section/about/board/scott/
MSG causes retinal problems, among others. Greenie health food stores have shelves linked with organic, naturally grown foods laced with msg, spices, whey, soy isolates and malted barley. All in the list have high concs of glutamic acid (msg) and cause problems. Truthinlebeling.org.
Grrrr...
As it stands, I always add salt to prepared foods. Fortunately, we don’t eat that much prepared food, but cook our own, and I bring leftovers to work for lunch. And we put in as much salt as we feel like when cooking.
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