Mike G wrote: Hash Browns and Steak: Two Natural Allies In the War Against Al-Qaeda,

I'll save a mod some work. This is an LTHForum quote if there ever was one.

I never meant to imply that the studies I cited or others (some of which, such as NHANES, do appear to show that low salt diets may lead to higher mortality rates) settle the question. I just meant to show that the issue of dietary salt is highly controversial. There is no conclusive answer. Yet CSPI presents "salt is bad for you" as a given, and many media and consumers lap that hyperbole right up without question.

And while there are certainly more food options for consumers in affluent communities than in poor ones, there are places to acquire fresh food in some of the poorer parts of this town, for example:

Ashburn/Englewood/Gresham Chicago Farmers Market
On Plaza at the northeast corner
63d & Halsted
June-October
Wednesday, 7:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

There are also markets in communities such as Lawndale, Austin and West Lawn.

The linkCathy2 provided above provides information about the WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which issues coupons that can be used to buy fresh, unprepared fruits, vegetables and herbs from farmers, farmers' markets or roadside stands.

Were CSPI advocating programs to provide additional fresh-food options to low-income households -- or any households -- I'd have no problem with them. I have a problem with their strident scare tactics aimed at pushing the government to ban foods, their villification of food manufacturers as poison pushers and their position that fat people are ignorant, irresponsible, unhealthy and profligate.

The WIC farmer's market program is a good thing, of course, but in its standard program WIC only allows fruit juice for women and children (not sure how the carrots fit in -- they do say that on their website; maybe the carrot producers had a hand in that) so in the winter, say, or if there's no farmer's market near you, it's Hi-C for everybody. Thankfully, the whole program is currently under review, since the WIC packages have not been modified since 1974. If these changes go through, children would be entitled to vouchers of $8 a month, and pregnant and nursing women $10 a month for fresh fruit and vegetables. That won't cover much, but it is better than nothing. There's more about this from the National Academy of Sciences (responsible for the WIC review) at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11280.html.

WIC as provided by Illinois Department of Human Services wrote:Nutritious foods
WIC provides eligible participants with a variety of highly nutritious supplemental foods, including:
milk
eggs
cheese
juice
cereal
dry beans or peas
iron-fortified infant formula
breastfeeding mothers may also receive tuna fish and carrots
These foods are rich in protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron and folic acid.

Through the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), participants are provided with additional coupons that can be used to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at participating farmers’ markets. (FMNP is currently in a limited service area.)

It's always interesting when exactly one component is emphasized to support someone's point. WIC is a wonderful program for those in need.

I'm glad WIC exists; it allows poor women access to food that they might otherwise go without. I'd like to see more government programs that provide food assistance to the poor. But WIC simply today does not reflect nutritional standards that have been common knowledge for some time, for instance that fruit juice is not the best choice for growing children. This is not my opinion; it is the judgement of the dozen scientists (nutritionists, MDs, etc.) who sat on the National Academy of Science panel mentioned above. (The produce additions are not the only revisions; more access to calcium rich food besides whole milk, for instance, is another recommended change.) And as I indicated, I hope that these reforms are put in place so that WIC participants have better access to healthier food, so that the program does what it is supposed to do -- provide good nutrition for women and children who cannot otherwise afford the food they need. My larger point is that government food programs, even when they exist, do not necessarily provide the healthy food options that more affluent folks enjoy.

A couple of interesting columns on government and the so-called "obesity epidemic":

Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2005

Townhall.com, May 19, 2005

Your body belongs to the nation!
Your body belongs to the Führer!
You have the duty to be healthy!
Food is not a private matter!


(German National Socialist slogans, 1937-1944)

I have refrained from weighing in on this thread (and believe me, I have plenty of opinions) but I think it is time for the moderators to put a stop to this. It has ceased to be about the food we want to eat, and has degenerated into the food we would like to eat even if we didn't want to but would if someone told us we couldn't, and other things like that.

Eat a peach. They won't be in the markets that much longer.

I want to make a few comments.

First, I am the product of inner-city neighborhoods and many of my relatives never owned a car so they were somewhat limited to those places along a bus line. Despite this, they were able to make it to the farmer's markets and buy fresh vegetable and fruits and prepare a balanced meal.

Second, many of the groceries that I have shopped over the years did 50-80% of their food business in food stamps. While I will grant that none of the inner-city groceries (Farmer Jacks in Detroit, National and Schnucks in St. Louis or Krogers in Cincinnati) would ever match up with Wegman's/ Byerly's / Ukrops / Dierbergs or stores of that ilk, every one of them offered fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and dairy products of adequate quality and variety that anyone trying to eat a healthy diet could eat one. There were a lot of food stamp receipients who were making good nutritional choices. However, there was sizeable group that mage poor choices and loaded up on the highly processed foods. But they all had a choice ... if they were not out front selling food stamps for cash.

Third, I have seen many lower income families who eat a better diet than a lot of high income families. I used to have some friends who thought Stouffer's was one of the four food groups.

Fourth, government food programs, especially the School Lunch Programs, serve some of the worst food out there. The quality of the food provided by the federal government - and I was "blessed" with two tractor trailers of it a month in one of my positions - made me truly appreciate the quality suppliers such as Sysco, Monarch, or Kraft. I had a few employees who somehow had developed recipes to use up a lot of the food and make it reasonably edible ... standard recipes did not work.

Finally, in May 2001, I cut the cable and ditched my television sets. I was tired of listening to all of the "sky is falling" news snippets that are now passed off as journalism

LAZ wrote:I never meant to imply that the studies I cited or others (some of which, such as NHANES, do appear to show that low salt diets may lead to higher mortality rates) settle the question. I just meant to show that the issue of dietary salt is highly controversial. There is no conclusive answer. Yet CSPI presents "salt is bad for you" as a given, and many media and consumers lap that hyperbole right up without question.

I see no reason to believe CSPI on the subject of salt. Indeed, their name notwithstanding, they show consistently low regard for the science underlying their issues. But your claims are right out of their playbook, providing hyperbole on behalf of the other side. The NHANES1 survey (data gathered from 1971-1974) did yield data that links high salt intake to increased cardiovascular disease in obese people, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (after accounting for collinearity of sodium and obesity). The analysis you cite by Alderman, et al, (1998) was a meta-analysis of some of the NHANES1 data, and Alderman’s conclusion was subsequently explained away by later researchers who accounted for confounds in his analysis. From Frolich and Varagic (2004; registration required): “A large body of evidence has emerged from clinical epidemiological and interventional investigations as well as experimental studies that have repeatedly identified a positive relationship between salt and hypertension. The multinational Intersalt study clearly related dietary sodium and blood pressure across many populations and, even more difficult to demonstrate, within populations. In support of these epidemiological findings, well-controlled clinical trials have provided strong evidence that reduction of sodium intake lowers arterial pressure in both hypertensive and normotensive people.”

The potential deleterious health effects of a high salt diet are not "highly controversial," unless you work for the Salt Institute. There are many conclusive answers for good nutrition based on the available science, just not the ones CSPI gives. I think you're right to dismiss CSPI, but wrong to conclude that high dietary salt is healthy or some how still a mystery. The underlying physiology of sodium metabolism and the complex intereactions of many other factors in nutrition are subjects of ongoing scientific enquiry. Just because the role of salt (and other factors) in hypertension and its subsequent health effects is complex doesn't mean its time to put a salt-lick in every room of your house. I wish it were different, but it's not.

Gedanken experiment: If the CSPI came out strongly against eating well salted Krispie Kremes, washed down with a pint of Everclear and a few lines of cocaine, would that make such a dietary regimen healthy?

Please, please, can we start a thread on research methodology, so we can all learn about causation and spuriousness and how marriages last longer in cities with major league ball clubs, and students who drink beer get better grades than students who don't. Maybe we could talk about that experiment in Washington, DC where a bunch of people came to town planning to lower the crime rate by practicing transcendental meditation around the clock, and LOOK MA, it happened.

Or better, let's save those discussions for book groups or work, and talk about what foods we absolutely couldn't eat without salt, what restaurants oversalt their foods, how much salt we use at home, how our salt intake has changed as we've learned about food (I know I use more as I age and I try to be aware of it), what foods we can eat completely without salt (meat and potatoes, for me, need no salt) and what foods we just like a little better with some salt (having spent my formative years in the south, for me that would be melon).

mmm, three-mode factor analysis, canonical correlation, multidimensional scaling.... But I sober up abruptly when recalling the Operating Principle of Dissertation Defense: when reciting from one's dissertation research, the more fundamental the challenge, the more sonorous the recitation.

uh, cum grano salis.

Choey wrote: uh, cum grano salis.

Yes, with my melon. It improves the taste. All y'all who've never eaten a giant hybrid watermelon chilled ice cold in the south, just put a grain of salt on your any little old melon and see how it improves the taste.

Not that I'm trying to contribute to people being for or against salt science, junk or otherwise

Salt is the policeman of taste: it keeps the various flavors of a dish in order and restrains the stronger from tyrannizing over the weaker.
Margaret Visser

Choey wrote:The potential deleterious health effects of a high salt diet are not "highly controversial," unless you work for the Salt Institute. There are many conclusive answers for good nutrition based on the available science, just not the ones CSPI gives. I think you're right to dismiss CSPI, but wrong to conclude that high dietary salt is healthy or some how still a mystery. The underlying physiology of sodium metabolism and the complex intereactions of many other factors in nutrition are subjects of ongoing scientific enquiry. Just because the role of salt (and other factors) in hypertension and its subsequent health effects is complex doesn't mean its time to put a salt-lick in every room of your house. I wish it were different, but it's not.

Gedanken experiment: If the CSPI came out strongly against eating well salted Krispie Kremes, washed down with a pint of Everclear and a few lines of cocaine, would that make such a dietary regimen healthy?

I could go pick out a couple of other studies to cite and then you'd find a few more and it would prove nothing. As you say,

The underlying physiology of sodium metabolism and the complex intereactions of many other factors in nutrition are subjects of ongoing scientific enquiry.

I am in no way concluding that a high-salt diet is "healthy." I am concluding that there is insufficient evidence to label it unhealthy, particularly for people who don't suffer from hypertension.

It seems like medical science keeps change its mind about what does and doesn't constitute a healthful diet. (Remember the four food groups? Oat bran? And with Starbucks on every corner, why are we no longer hearing so much about the evils of caffeine? Perhaps because it hasn't proven to be so evil after all.) But whatever it is, it should be my choice as to whether I care to eat it.

CSPI is all about taking choices away.

Salty dog

9 ounces gin
Juice of 3 large grapefruit, freshly squeezed
2 teaspoons salt
Ice

Shake over ice. If desired, strain into in salt-rimmed cocktail glasses. 4 servings.

(sotto voce) Eppur si muove....

LAZ wrote:It seems like medical science keeps change its mind about what does and doesn't constitute a healthful diet.

This is what science is. You go with the best information you have and build on it to get better information. Especially given that short-term results can differ from long-term results, this is not a bad thing. It's when the process ends that it's a bad thing.

LAZ wrote:CSPI is all about taking choices away.

Every interest group is about taking choices away, and it shouldn't take much perspective to differentiate between "a guy with a fax machine" and an industry that spends nearly a billion dollars a year on a single brand of cookies. (Really, if what I see around the Web is an indication, the guy with the fax machine has been pretty much forgotten in the media.) It's a shame that people decline to see how the processed food industry is working far more aggressively and spending far more money to take choice away as well.

Am I arguing that the guy with the fax machine is an angel? Right from my first post, I acknowledged that he isn't. But we've known for decades that a healthful diet is pretty much a balanced and limited one. What processed-food manufacturers are sending out that message? (One market segment actually does. Who knows? Hands? ) And when people who overreact to scare stories turn their diets to processed Lite Crap, Healthy Crap, Lo-Carb Crap, where is that crap coming from?

There's a pretty reasoned, and reasonable, approach to human health and diet presented in yesterday's New York Times that can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/science/23conv.html. It's an interview with Dr. Jeremiah Stamler, whose "name is synonomous with preventive cardiology;" he is former chair of the department of preventive medicine at NU's Med School. On another point, though I've gotten more than my two cents in on this topic and am thus not an unbaised observer, I'd just like to say that I really appreciate these more philosophical/political/sociological/literary exchanges that take place sometimes on this forum (many of which I read with great interest but don't contribute to) -- in addition, of course, to the great restaurant and shopping discussions that I take advantage of all the time. I'd like to thank LTH for letting them happen, as I like to think about food in all its aspects almost as much as I enjoy eating it. The range of topics and ideas expressed, it seems to me, is what makes this forum truly unique and special.

On a related topic, I was at McDonald's in Water Tower Place today with a friend and her small children. I had already eaten, but availed myself of a few her kids' french fries. Now, it's been several months since I last had them, but these definitely tasted different. What immediately came to mind was a term wine critics sometimes use to describe certain whites: cat pee. There were weirdly grassy and acidic notes. Bleh. I'm not sure where McDonald's is on their phase-in of trans-fat free cooking oil, but if I had to guess, the location in H2O Tower has made the change. Pity.

Bob S. wrote:You go with the best information you have and build on it to get better information. Especially given that short-term results can differ from long-term results, this is not a bad thing. It's when the process ends that it's a bad thing.

The bad thing is when half-formed scientific theory becomes government policy because of the bully pulpits of interest groups pushing their own ends. I don't doubt that CSPI's admittedly erroneous report on "Liquid Candy" helped to lead to numerous communities yanking pop machines from their schools.

Bob S. wrote:Every interest group is about taking choices away, and it shouldn't take much perspective to differentiate between "a guy with a fax machine" and an industry that spends nearly a billion dollars a year on a single brand of cookies. (Really, if what I see around the Web is an indication, the guy with the fax machine has been pretty much forgotten in the media.)

Care to estimate the amount Americans spend on diet books, diet plans, diet doctors, diet foods and research programs fueled by the hysteria pumped up by that guy and his fax machine?

Google News turned up 125 stories citing the "Center for Science in the Public Interest" in the past month. That figure is trimmed for identical wire-service stories appearing in multiple publications and includes only limited broadcast coverage.

Bob S. wrote:It's a shame that people decline to see how the processed food industry is working far more aggressively and spending far more money to take choice away as well.

I don't see that at all. What I see is that grocery stores are getting bigger and bigger and offering and more and more foods. Yes, there are more varieties of Oreo cookies, but there are also more types of fruit and vegetables and fresh fish.

I'm not defending the processed food industry. They have nothing on their minds except the bottom line. If Americans want to buy food full of sugar and salt, they'll sell it; if they want low-carb crap, they'll sell that. And they'll promote the products they sell in ways to which weak-minded consumers may be susceptible. But I don't see them campaigning to halt the sale of broccoli and oranges or pushing higher taxes on carrot juice.

LAZ wrote:The bad thing is when half-formed scientific theory becomes government policy because of the bully pulpits of interest groups pushing their own ends.

The kind pushed by CSPI or the kind described in 440 pages of detail by Marion Nestle in Food Politics? All I'm asking, LAZ, is for you to acknowledge that CSPI may make some noise every year or two, but it's a gnat against the major food companies and their own trade organizations.

Also, misinterpreted reporting is not "half-formed scientific theory." Either the methodology was valid or it wasn't; there's no half-formed anything on that end. This is the problem with the phrase "junk science." If a study is bad, it's important to show how its methodology failed. If the methodology is valid but the study is being misinterpreted or misreported, there is no "junk science," just lazy writers out for a story hook or vested interests trying to minimize or discredit valid results.

LAZ wrote:I don't doubt that CSPI's admittedly erroneous report on "Liquid Candy" helped to lead to numerous communities yanking pop machines from their schools.

Then it did some good.

And if you, as a food writer, can present any examples, I'll accept 'em. (I'm not being sarcastic.) Otherwise, it's just your assumption.

LAZ wrote:Care to estimate the amount Americans spend on diet books, diet plans, diet doctors, diet foods and research programs fueled by the hysteria pumped up by that guy and his fax machine?

My guess is really not much -- the marketing departments of those diet publishers seem to be doing their jobs without much help. More than zero, less than you're implying, but again, you're a food writer and you've got research available to you that I don't -- show me data and I'll take it.

LAZ wrote:Google News turned up 125 stories citing the "Center for Science in the Public Interest" in the past month. That figure is trimmed for identical wire-service stories appearing in multiple publications and includes only limited broadcast coverage.

Sure, but how much of it was related to this one salt report? Are they getting reported in a wide variety of food reporting on a variety of topics, or were the unique stories reported by journalists, and if so, did they get both sides of the story? I blamed CSPI for their role in the hysteria right up front, but let's not forget that bad reporting can make a half-assed story fully assed.

LAZ wrote:I'm not defending the processed food industry. They have nothing on their minds except the bottom line. If Americans want to buy food full of sugar and salt, they'll sell it; if they want low-carb crap, they'll sell that. And they'll promote the products they sell in ways to which weak-minded consumers may be susceptible. But I don't see them campaigning to halt the sale of broccoli and oranges or pushing higher taxes on carrot juice.

Well, you missed the page of ActivistCash I cited earlier, where they're listing groups like the Organic Consumers Association as dangerous radicals. But still, this paragraph is pretty much common ground, or as close to it as we're going to get, and after promising myself I was going to bow out of this discussion three times, I think I really need to do it.

P.S.: The processed-food market segment I was referring to in my previous post, the one that acknowledged the importance of a balanced diet, was breakfast cereals.

Boy I hate to weigh in on this thread, but...

LAZ wrote:CSPI is all about taking choices away.

Choey is correct, you are taking hyperbole straight from the CSPI handbook. So here is the challenge...

Name one choice (other than the quixotic freedom to make an uniformed choice) that CSPI has taken away from you? The fact is that CSPI has never advocated a law that limits your choices as an adult. The fact is, CSPI is all about full disclosure, not removing choices.

This same paradigm exists in the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934...an investment offering can be nothing more than blue sky, as long as every fact reasonably of concern to an investor is fully disclosed.

As far as I know you can still buy a pound of lard to render down and mix with a container of salt for breakfast...if that is your choice, but both of these items better have a nutrition lable on them. That is a benefit to you that CSPI or a similar organization fought for your right to be informed.

Your argument that CSPI has removed your choices of food belongs with the people who believe that can have a one on one conversation with God anywhere, but somehow the "Government" no longer allows God in schools.

LAZ also wrote: "And they'll promote the products they sell in ways to which weak-minded consumers may be susceptible."

Weak minded? Feh. How about a busy single parent of three that doesn't have the time to be obseesed about food? How about someone who just wants to level the playing field....I may choose to eat high sodium foods, but at least offer me a fair and informed choice to decide if I want to eat high sodium foods, rather than mask the use of this age old preservative by calling it seasoning?

You want McDonalds day in and day out without knowing what the cost is down the road, fine, don't look at the numbers. For some like me, I want the numbers, so that I know what I have to do to balance my trip MickyD's with the rest of my eating day.

pd

pdaane wrote:Name one choice (other than the quixotic freedom to make an uniformed choice) that CSPI has taken away from you?

I think CSPI DID take a choice or two away from me. Perhaps it's not so much a lost choice as a lost opportunity (because the old has completely been made unavailable in lieu of the new), but Oreos made with lard and McDonald's fries cooked in beef tallow are no longer available. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't CSPI at least an inspiration for the decisions of Nabisco and McDonald's to eliminate those ingredients from their products? I'm not saying that if lardy Oreos or tallow-cooked french fries were offered side by side with the current substitutes I would favor the former over the latter, but the fact is I don't have that choice, and maybe that is CSPI's doing. If those choices were available, I would and could make an informed decision; assuming it was CSPI's doing, then yes indeed, here is a choice CSPI took away from me. Probably an insignificant or purely academic point, but you phrased your challenge just so...

Choey wrote:If the CSPI came out strongly against eating well salted Krispie Kremes, washed down with a pint of Everclear and a few lines of cocaine, would that make such a dietary regimen healthy?

Probably not, but is there any proof of that? And by proof I mean in the form of a canonical Aristotelian syllogism. My point here is that in polemic, each side of an issue demands a stricter proof from its opponent than it is willing or capable of providing for itself. Or at least that is often the case ...

Jim, my point may have been "based emotionally on exasperation and intellectually on errors of syntax" (as Russell once characterized Sartre's philosophy), but my intention was to follow LAZ's hyperbolic reaction to the CSPI with more absurd (if admittedly trailer-parky) hyperbole of my own. In my view, she's reacting to CSPI's highly selective use of existing science with major Bowdlerization of her own. The point I failed to make was on the misuse of the underlying evidence, not on its being true or even partially true. If I was (were?) better at using the subjunctive mood, my point might have been clearer. I am ineluctably a product of public schools.

By the way, I believe Nichomachus' kid wrecked logic for nearly two millenia. Not until Leibniz was any discernible light shined into the intellectual abyss created by the Stagirite. In matters of philosophical logic, I fall somewhere between Gödel and Ken Kesey: X is true, even if unprovable or it never happened.

Choey wrote:I am ineluctably a product of public schools.

Me, too! (North Central High School, Indianapolis, Class of '85; M.A. in (of all things) Philosophy, from Indiana University, 1991).

Anyway, I was just kidding with that post, thus my use of the "Blues Brothers" smiley face. I got your point.

And finally, please don't use the name "Gödel" any more than absolutely necessary. No really. After two semesters of "metalogic" (i.e., set theory) at IU, all culminating in demonstrating Herr Doktor G's Big Theorem of Incompleteness (a proof of 8-gajillion lines that I literally memorized in order to pass the final exam), I was such damaged goods with regard to mathematics that I actually went to law school! And this was even with Ray Smullyan teaching one of those semesters.

Bob S. wrote:you're a food writer and you've got research available to you that I don't

I've been away for several days with only very limited access to a computer. Before I left, I had started a long reply to this, bristling with statistics and examples and citing every one of the readily available public sources I had used.

Now that I've returned, I've decided not to post it, since it will only prolong an argument I suspect most here are finding tedious. To borrow a phrase, do your own due diligence. If your conclusions are different than mine, there's nothing much I can do about it.

However, I will address what's quoted above: I don't have access to any arcane information; nor do I participate in this forum on any professional basis.