NY Lawmaker Proposes Salt Ban

Kind of surprised this snuck under everybody's radar today:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/ ... -salt-ban/

I keep reading and searching to see where I'm missing the joke, but it appears that at least one NY lawmaker has now officially made a move to completely ban the use of salt in restaurants, punishable by a $1000 fine per offense.

Kind of makes the Chicago City council look like geniuses For only banning FG...

Not that I want to touch off a round of I-told-you-so's, especially since I can't imagine this thing has a snowball's chance of actually passing, but it does make those who would have otherwise been branded chicken littles in the wake of Bloomberg's "encouragement" look considerably more reasonable.

In any case, I'm of the opinion that this is actually great news. Nothing like exposing the lunatic fringe of any movement to turn popular sentiment against it.

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message. From today's NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html?hp

These are very interesting articles - I did a blog post a while back on salt and read up on the pros and cons and the industry reaction. The sad thing is that the wing-nut zero-sum approach will probably do more to fuel the industry's assertion that they can't make good food without high salt levels, even though that's what most of us do in our own kitchens.

In general, the response to any health issue lately has been that both sides play around with the truth until it suits them, which is a shame, because it often means that things don't improve when they could. I thought the Institute of Medicine's approach was a good one - they assert that most people won't notice a gradual reduction in sodium over time, and suggest that if this was done systematically, it might address the issues the food industry fears. It's important to keep in mind that only about 11% of our sodium intake is added by the consumer - so palatable food can and is being made with less salt; heavy processing is what's driving the extra sodium.

It could certainly be said that most people don't suffer from hypertension and don't need to watch their salt intake - but in general, the people who are at risk are vulnerable physically and financially - and are most likely to be eating a steady diet of highly processed foods. If a gradual reduction (the key being gradual) in sodium won't hurt the rest of us, I think it's a good thing.