Posted on 02/24/2005 11:05:17 AM PST by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A consumer group sued the federal government on Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to control salt in food.
Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said.
So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set limits for salt in foods.
"There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe,'" CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.
"In fact, salt is generally recognized as unsafe, because it is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. The federal government should require food manufacturers to gradually lower their sodium levels."
The CSPI said Americans get most of their salt in processed and restaurant foods. In 1983 the FDA had just begun requiring labels describing sodium content on some packaged foods so the court decided to wait and see how it worked.
The new lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, contends that it has not worked well because salt content in foods is higher than ever.
"FDA is currently evaluating CSPI's report on salt, including the recommendations it contains," Kathleen Quinn, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.
The government says Americans should try to keep sodium to about 2,300 milligrams a day. "This is about 1 teaspoon," the American Heart Association says.
Salt is not found only in the salt shaker. For example, a teaspoon of baking soda contains 1,000 mg of sodium.
Patients with high blood pressure and others at high risk are told to eat even less salt -- 1,500 mg a day. "Nevertheless, sodium intake has increased steadily since the 1970s," the CSPI said in a statement.
"The medical community has reached a consensus that diets high in sodium are a major cause of high blood pressure as well as pre-hypertension, or blood pressure just short of high blood pressure," said Dr. Stephen Havas of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
"Today roughly 65 million Americans have high blood pressure and another 45 million have pre-hypertension."
The CSPI issued a report saying that processed foods and restaurant fare contribute almost 80 percent of sodium to the U.S. diet. Frozen dinners are especially high in salt, the report finds.
Depending on the brand, some salad dressings contain nearly a quarter of the day's allowance of sodium while others are low in sodium, the report finds.
One chain restaurant's breakfast contains two days' worth of sodium -- 4,460 mg -- the CSPI report said.
Chinese restaurant meals can be especially, high too. "A typical order of General Tso's chicken with rice has 3,150 mg," the group said.
Dr. Claude Lenfant, president of the World Hypertension League and a former head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute supported the report.
"If we could reduce the sodium in processed and restaurant foods by half, we could save about 150,000 lives per year," he said.
Its highly amusing how these food nazis keep on harping on this subject when studies have been coming out showing no link between hypertension and salt intake. ITS GENETIC!
I have a friend who's been on a salt limited diet for the last 10 years and it did not help his blood pressure one bit. In fact, he dang near had a heart attack when his Dr. told him that his problem was not so much diet as heredity
Here’s a comment for the CSPI loonies. Salt can’t be all that bad. Animals will travel miles in the wild to get to saltlicks. In this part of the world, cattle owners put saltblocks out in the pastures for their cows. My horses loved rock salt as much as they loved sugar. ‘splain that you bunch of phonies.
Does anyone out there know if we the taxpayers in these FDA lawsuits, pay for the costs of both sides like they do in the EPA and endangered species cases? I'm getting sick of our government becoming a lawyer employment agency.
KNOCK IT OFF!!!!
Very few things in life actually need to be regulated. This went TOO far long before fat, sugar, salt, nicotine....
Screw off. I like my salt and nobody lives forever.
Salt is not a deadly ingredient for 99% of the population. Why regulate it for the 1%? We don't regulate p-nut butter and there are many with deathly allergies. What about sugar? Think of the high persentage of folks with diabetes. How stupid. Just move somewhere where they agree to do this for you and leave the rest of us alone.
SALT POLICE!!
I'd forgotten about the picture on the containers. But, I would guess pervert trial lawyers would be itching for a chance to "sue the pants" of that little girl, huh?
Blatant marketing to children. Sue the hell out of 'em.
There was a major article about salt in Science magazine a few years ago. It said that the evidence for the negative effects of salt was appearing weaker all the time. It had got to the point where even very large studies could not find health problems that could be definitely ascribed to salt. But as this happened, the scientists who had staked their careers on proving the evils of salt were getting more and more militant in their demands to place controls on this dangerous substance.
Yes it is.......
Some folks, like myself need gobs of salt to maintain our electrolyte balance. If I were to cut back, I would fall on my face on the first hot day of summer.
Kidney function, sweating ability and a horde of other things have much to do with how much salt everyone needs, and no one person is the same as another.
Same thing with cholesterol, IMHO.
From my cold, dead hands! How are we supposed to get our daily allotment of iodine? No salt -- more goiters!
I read once that the last straw was when the king levied a per-tree tax on one's property.
This group is a very vocal supporter of smoking bans........all they are trying to do is destroy the hospitality industry any way they can.
My salt skaker is right next to the beer dispenser, which I rest my pistol on, in my SUV.
Morton's adds calcium silicate and dextrose along with iodine to pure sodium chloride; the calcium silicate keeps the salt from clumping by reducing salt's hygroscopic nature.
The serving size suggested on the label is 1/4 teaspoon or 25% of the FDA recommended 1 teaspoon per day for a 2,000 calorie diet.
CSPI is trying to pry open a backdoor to the vaults of the big food-processers with this suit.
Courtesy of another freeper the last time the nutjobs reared their ugly heads:
http://www.cspiscam.com/
But where do you keep your cigarettes?
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