gleam wrote:Can I assume that we've all seen the news that Frito Lay has developed a new salt crystal formation that will allow them to cut sodium levels by 25% in their potato chips without reducing the saltiness the consumer perceives?

PepsiCo Develops 'Designer Salt' to Chip Away at Sodium Intake

Yup, since I posted the same article on this thread on Mar. 22, it's safe to assume. Very interesting article. Glad to see large corporation's food research departments being creative. On the issue of salt in processed foods, I'm in favor of reducing salt in processed, mass market foods as long as they don't replace it with a nefarious preservative. I feel that people's tastes adjust. I found that when I eliminated or reduced salt or sugar, I didn't notice the difference after several weeks nor had the craving. I also look favorably on more transparency by national chain restaurants. Then, if I choose to order the fattiest, most saltiest thing on the menu, I can. However, I probably wouldn't Indeed, it appears transparency is an incentive for the same culprits to produce healthier options.

aschie30 wrote:

Kennyz wrote:

jesteinf wrote:I guess my only point is, if there's a little less sodium in the little circle of turkey product that one finds in a Lunchable...that's probably not such a bad thing, and the world will remain safe for democracy.

Sure, but what if you find out that the lunchable actually has the same sodium content as the Iberico ham you're buying from a gourmet grocer? How could the FDA get away with restricting one, but not the other?

Easy. You're assuming that all regulations are written blindly and applied fairly across the board to all foods (and, by extension, food manufacturers).

Right, that's what I was assuming. Well, either that or you've come with an interpretation of my rhetorical question that's fantastically literal.

Here's an AP story that reflects the knee-jerk reaction to the salt issue that we've been discussing here:

Salt taking a cut in groceries, restaurant menus

snip from article wrote:Sixteen food companies plan to cut the amount of salt in bacon, flavored rice and dozens of other products as part of a national effort to reduce American's sodium consumption by 20 percent.

As was predicted above, we now have bacon, a food in which salt is an essential component, being targeted for salt reduction. I don't think anyone would argue bacon's health benefits but it is an innately salty food. Not only does this type of reaction completely ignore reality, it also creates the dubious expectation that bacon which is lower in sodium will be significantly healthier.

snip from article wrote:"Sodium is a major cause of high blood pressure, which in turn can lead to heart attack and stroke," Bloomberg said.

This is, for all intents and purposes, wrong and it's a real shame to see this type of effort being predicated on semi-scientific b.s. Bloomberg's nothing more than an ignorant bully with bad information. But if these food manufacturers don't go along with his strong-arming, they'll be hung out to dry in a way they and their shareholders cannot afford. For people who aren't already hypertensive, salt alone will not cause the condition. For those who are, low-sodium bacon and other commerically-processed, cured meats are still foods that should be eaten very sparingly or avoided entirely.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:As was predicted above, we now have bacon, a food in which bacon is an essential component, being targeted for salt reduction.

There have been reduced salt bacon products on the market for years, maybe decades. The Bloomberg initiative simply provides Kraft and its ilk with increased marketing strength for a crappy product it's been trying to sell forever. I wouldn't ring the alarm bells over this. These proposed regulations and initiatives are a boondoggle for the processed food companies they supposedly target.

Kennyz wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:As was predicted above, we now have bacon, a food in which bacon is an essential component, being targeted for salt reduction.

There have been reduced salt bacon products on the market for years, maybe decades. The Bloomberg initiative simply provides Kraft and its ilk with increased marketing strength for a crappy product it's been trying to sell forever. I wouldn't ring the alarm bells over this. These proposed regulations and initiatives are a boondoggle for the processed food companies they supposedly target.

Yeah, it's not low-salt bacon that makes me mad. As you said it's been around for a long time. It's the fact that it's now been glommed onto a political cause -- and a bogus one, at that -- that irks me. This misguided, anti-salt movement raises my blood pressure far more than salt ever could.

=R=

There are two separate issues, it seems to me. One is whether too much salt is unhealthy for too many people. The other is whether the government should do anything about it.

There are probably those here who would say that even if the answer to the first question is yes, the government still has no business telling us what we can and can't eat. I'm not one of those people.

I'm not in favor of overprotective regulation. So to me the whole thing hinges on the first question. Ronnie is sure that the answer to the first question is no. I don't know enough about it to disagree with him, but I also don't know enough about it to agree. So I'll just say that if we can stipulate (if only for the moment) that high salt levels are harmful to health, the government has just as much cause to regulate this as it does the levels of mercury in our foods. (Granted it doesn't do a perfect job of regulating this, either, but I want it to.)

riddlemay wrote:There are two separate issues, it seems to me. One is whether too much salt is unhealthy for too many people...... Ronnie is sure that the answer to the first question is no......So I'll just say that if we can stipulate (if only for the moment) that high salt levels are harmful to health........

Interesting that there's people who think the idea that "too much sodium" is a farce of some kind and that there's no such thing as too much sodium in a human's diet.

Where do you people, who think the "sodium scare" isn't real get your idea that it is a farce?

What would make you believe the opposite? Scientific proof?

Just wondering........

riddlemay wrote:Ronnie is sure that the answer to the first question is no.

I'm certainly no expert but as an interested party, I've read a lot about this and the information seems to overwhelmingly support the premise that sodium exacerbates already-existing hypertension but doesn't cause it.

riddlemay wrote:So I'll just say that if we can stipulate (if only for the moment) that high salt levels are harmful to health, the government has just as much cause to regulate this as it does the levels of mercury in our foods. (Granted it doesn't do a perfect job of regulating this, either, but I want it to.)

I find this a bit flawed because whether it's harmful or not, salt is an ingredient in food. Mercury is an unwanted contaminant and I've never seen a recipe which called for it.

=R=

kenji wrote:What would make you believe the opposite? Scientific proof?

Just wondering........

Absolutely but almost everything I've read on the subject suggests otherwise. If anything, I came into this assuming that salt did cause hypertension. I was suprised to read in so many separate sources that it isn't believed to.

Of course, that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as "too much sodium." Too much of anything, even drinking water, can be harmful.

=R=

I think most of the posters here (as well as most people who seem to be discussing this issue, more widely) are missing the main issue here, which is salt in *processed* food.

The problem isn't restaurants putting salt on french fries. It's restaurants that buy frozen, processed fries that have salt added as a preservative. Often the salts used as preservatives are formulated in such a way that they don't add a lot of perceived salty taste to the end product, or they're counter-balanced by added sugar. The salt (in various forms) is there to lend a longer shelf life for the product, not for any qualitative reason.

This is the same with *many* processed foods--canned soup, frozen dinners, rice-a-roni type rices and noodles, anything with a "flavor packet", etc, etc, etc....The sodium levels on these things are through the roof, often meeting the amount recommended for a full day's intake.

I believe that these products are what the government will be targeting if this bill is implemented. I highly doubt that the bill will have any impact on freshly-prepared foods where salt is added during the prep or cooking.

And rightly so. Restaurant food (at least those made from fresh ingredients on premise) almost never have the sodium levels of processed foods. They don't need to; the whole point of all the added salt in the processed foods is to allow for the long shipping, warehousing, etc,....

As for where I stand, I don't agree with restricting these foods or forcing companies to lower the sodium in them, but I would like to see a labeling requirement that indicates in large bold letters that "this food is a processed food product containing high levels of sodium" in order to distinguish between processed and freshly prepared. When buying bacon or proscuitto, the logical response to such a label would be to think "yeah, no shit". But if you're buying something that you believe is healthy, like a "healthy choice" frozen dinner, you might be surprised to see the label and think twice.

Darren72 wrote:Katie, I think if you read the earlier posts you'd see that we are talking about regulating salt in processed foods, not salt you put on food yourself. 75 to 80 percent of salt consumption comes from processed foods.

Darren, yes, I understand that the issue at hand is salt in processed foods. By my comments:

I understand the concern for people with high blood pressure - I grew up in a home with a parent with serious high blood pressure

and

Perhaps because of my dad's health concerns, I've always kept a corner of my eye out for news on salt's role in health, and I've never come across anything that persuaded me that salt was harmful to people with normal blood pressure.

I meant to convey that I've been paying attention to the salt-and-health issue for a long time.

bacon, a food in which bacon is an essential component

I would say so.

Edzo said:

But if you're buying something that you believe is healthy, like a "healthy choice" frozen dinner, you might be surprised to see the label and think twice.

*GASP!* Do you mean that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is. . .fibbing??

Hey, I just thought I'd share that I just consumed a tiny can of Ligo canned sardines in tomato that has 25% salt per serving and there are three servings per nutrition label. That means I just consumed 75% of daily salt intake Do I still get all the health benefits from the canned vs fresh not talking salt into account?

Edit: nevermind... just looked at the label for another brand and that one has no added salt.

In somewhat related news, local government officials in Santa Clara county (CA) have proposed a regulation banning the inclusion of toys in kids meals that exceed certain thresholds for salt, calories, fat and sugar.

I seem also to recall, health-wise, about that salt vs high blood pressure - it's not necessarily all people who already have high blood pressure, but may be just certain subsets of people who are genetically susceptible to having salt-exacerbated high blood pressure.

Bump.

Today's Tribune has a salt article that states: "Consuming too much sodium can raise blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart attacks, heart disease and strokes." It made me think of this thread and recalling that I never read anything concluding that salt really was bad for healthy people - which was always an illuminating, if counterintuitive, idea. So I did my own research and came across this paper in the NEJM, concluding that, even in people without hypertension, a reduced sodium diet lowers blood pressure. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200101043440101#t=abstract

Thanks for the interesting citation. The article does, however, beg the main question. It does not surprise me that lowering salt intake could lower blood pressure in those who do not have hypertension, but the question is, what is the benefit of that? If your blood pressure is normal, is there a benefit to keeping it a touch below normal, at the cost of eating less tasty food? The article has a brief hint on this: "Furthermore, epidemiologic studies suggest that diets low in sodium and high in potassium blunt the rise in blood pressure that normally occurs with age." But this is a very vague statement. Are they suggesting that by eating too much salt when you have normal blood pressure does permanent damage in that it could lead to hypertension when you would not develop it with lower salt intake? That is the key question.

Jonah

Jonah wrote:The article does, however, beg the main question. It does not surprise me that lowering salt intake could lower blood pressure in those who do not have hypertension, but the question is, what is the benefit of that? If your blood pressure is normal, is there a benefit to keeping it a touch below normal, at the cost of eating less tasty food?

Let me reiterate this:

elakin wrote:I think most of the posters here (as well as most people who seem to be discussing this issue, more widely) are missing the main issue here, which is salt in *processed* food.

The problem isn't restaurants putting salt on french fries. It's restaurants that buy frozen, processed fries that have salt added as a preservative. Often the salts used as preservatives are formulated in such a way that they don't add a lot of perceived salty taste to the end product, or they're counter-balanced by added sugar. The salt (in various forms) is there to lend a longer shelf life for the product, not for any qualitative reason.

This is the same with *many* processed foods--canned soup, frozen dinners, rice-a-roni type rices and noodles, anything with a "flavor packet", etc, etc, etc....The sodium levels on these things are through the roof, often meeting the amount recommended for a full day's intake.

I agree that we need to quantify the benefits of reduced sodium to assess the impacts of alternative policies. But you need to understand that no one is talking about taking away your ability to put salt on your fries.

Jonah wrote: Are they suggesting that by eating too much salt when you have normal blood pressure does permanent damage in that it could lead to hypertension when you would not develop it with lower salt intake? That is the key question.
Jonah

Right now you have hypertension when your normal BP is 140/90 or higher. There's theories now those numbers should be even lower.

Eating lots of sodium raises your BP because you increase the volume of your blood in your body by retaining water. Increased BP can lead to endothelial dysfunction which is linked with the development of atherosclerosis, a leading cause of cardiovascular events.

There's many factors that can lead you to atherosclerosis. Lowering your BP whether or not it's in the normal range can help you from damaging your arteries as you age. If you are already at 140/90 without meds drastically reducing your sodium could keep you off of medications to be healthy by lowering your BP.

You also mentioned "eating less tasty food". I can attest personally that you can drastically lower your sodium intake and within not much time at all most foods are still "tasty", but your diet can easily have 50-75% less sodium in it.

I 've been schooled by being a part of cardiac rehab phase I, II, and III programs.

The recent posts raise another interesting quesiton. I eat very little processed food. Yet I don't think I should jump to the conclusion that my diet is low in salt. It appears likely that my salt intake is reasonable based on that fact, but one can't be sure. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I really have no idea how much salt I ingest in an average day. Perhaps I should try to track it in some way over the course of a few days. Restaurants, of course, make this very difficult. For example, I eat at Cosi perhaps once a week and that includes a slice of their bread, which I know is liberally salted, but how much salt in one slice?

This also points out a key part of the public health problem. If I don't know how much salt I ingest, that means the vast, vast majority of people don't either. People know when they are eating high fat foods, but salt intake is far more elusive. Beyond avoiding canned soup and processed foods, the whole measurement thing gets very obscure.

Jonah wrote:Beyond avoiding canned soup and processed foods, the whole measurement thing gets very obscure.

Not sure what info you are specifically looking for, but most Americans eat 20+ meals in a week. Depending on what goes into your mouth it can be simple to determine a good estimate of the nutritional values if you track exactly what goes into your stomach.

Most of us aren't having more than 3+ meals in a week coming from a chef's kitchen kind of restaurant where general caloric and ingredient lists aren't published. Even 3 meals from a nice place means the other 17 meals can probably be tracked if it's important. When it's really important to not have a certain amount of sodium you might not go to Cosi.

Sodium content concern is way bigger than Campbells soup and Mcdonalds. Example, a fresh Kaufmans' or Chicago B&B bagel, yeah that huge thing, depending on which one you choose, can have 800mgs of sodium. That's more than 25% of what I ingest a day.

What's your goal Jonah?

kenji wrote:Sodium content concern is way bigger than Campbells soup and Mcdonalds. Example, a fresh Kaufmans' or Chicago B&B bagel, yeah that huge thing, depending on which one you choose, can have 800mgs of sodium. That's more than 25% of what I ingest a day.

Huh?

A plain Einstein Bagel has 460mg of sodium. The only bagel high in sodium is the "salt" bagel. These data are available from here.

My guess is that Kaufmans or NY Bagel and Bialy have less sodium than Einstein because the former are closer to homemade and aren't designed for a chain or to last very long.

In any case, for a person with an otherwise healthy blood pressure, eliminating processed foods is the main thing to avoid if you are concerned about salt intake.

Darren72 wrote:

kenji wrote:Sodium content concern is way bigger than Campbells soup and Mcdonalds. Example, a fresh Kaufmans' or Chicago B&B bagel, yeah that huge thing, depending on which one you choose, can have 800mgs of sodium. That's more than 25% of what I ingest a day.

Huh?

For a person wanting to watch sodium they can't assume one company's product info translates to another company's product.

http://www.calorieking.com/foods/search ... esults=yes

just plain bagels:

http://www.calorieking.com/foods/search ... esults=yes

Point being who knew one plain bagel could have 1/3 of days worth of sodium in it? I didn't until I took the time to research info on "everyday kind of non-processed foods"

kenji wrote:For a person wanting to watch sodium they can't assume one company's product info translates to another company's product.

This is exactly the mistake you made. Your 800mg of sodium figure seems pulled from thin air, and then applied to a different company's product.

Darren72 wrote:

kenji wrote:For a person wanting to watch sodium they can't assume one company's product info translates to another company's product.

This is exactly the mistake you made. Your 800mg of sodium figure seems pulled from thin air, and then applied to a different company's product.

What's your points Darren? Not sure where you want to go or what concepts you want to continue discussing?

As I said above, for a person with an otherwise healthy blood pressure, eliminating processed foods is the main thing to avoid if you are concerned about salt intake. I agree that processed/mass-market/shelf-stable bread is high in sodium (though your 800mg figure is high even for processed bagels). But fresh baked bread and bagels that are not designed to be shelf-stable are considerably lower. This is an important distinction.

Don't worry about me personally as all my heart indicators are good, fortunately! This is more a general overall interest in what constitutes healthy eating, a much more perplexing question that most people think. With salt, it's a particularly challenging one because we generally don't know how much salt we're getting, and there is debate over what is an appropriate level for people with normal blood pressure.

You did get me to go check my Cosi lunch, which is the Signature Salad and the whole grain bread. The bread, which tastes well seasoned, has only 72 milligrams of sodium, but the salad is curiously 664. I noted, interestingly, that most of their other salads are in the 1,400 to 1,500 range. That's over half of the recommneded daily intake of 2,300 for healthy adults and would be out of the question for those with high blood pressure. Now, how many people think getting a grilled wild salmon salad is "unhealthy," but its got 1,372 milligrams of sodium, or over half of the daily allowance (the fat and calories are pretty good!).

Most of the sodium in the salads come from the dressing, cheese, and meat/fish. A piece of chicken you cook at home has little sodium. The stuff cooked in a fast food restaurant has a lot. There's no getting around sodium in cheese, though the level varies from type to type.

No one meal makes or breaks a diet. If you have one meal that has half your daily salt intake, then you just watch the other two meals -- though if you have something simple for breakfast, like a banana and coffee, that means you pretty much have the whole second half of the day's intake for dinner. (Assuming, of course, that you're not knocking back a bag of chips mid-afternoon.)

A single high sodium meal probably won't make a difference -- even in those who are salt sensitive (which is only a relatively small percentage of those with high blood pressure), as giving up sodium only lowers blood pressure by 2 or 3 points. Unless someone is on the verge of having an aneurysm burst, one meal won't have any effect. So just eat your parsley (the potassium balances out the sodium) and have a lower sodium meal for the other meals.