Feb 12 2008

Salt and more salt

Center for Science in the Public Interest has petitioned the FDA to take away GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status for salt because of its links to high blood pressure. Yesterday’s  USA Today did a story on this issue with some terrific graphics, unfortunately not shown in the online version. Missing is the pie chart showing the sources of salt in American diets: naturally occurring 12%, added at the table 6%, used during cooking 5%–and 77% in food processing! If you want to avoid salt in your diet, you have to avoid processed foods. American producers say they cannot remove salt from their products or nobody would buy them. Really? The Australians have managed to convince their food industry to reduce the salt.  They’ve even achieved a 13% reduction in the salt in Vegemite!

5 comments
Share |
Tags:

Comments

I fear this will be a redux of CSPI’s campaign against saturated fats, where a relatively benign ingredient is vilified based on questionable evidence, replaced with something else (like trans fats), with CSPI’s blessing. Then later, when that substitute is found to be toxic, CSPI goes after it while disclaiming all responsibility for its presence in the food supply.

Salt is, after all, a food preservative, and as preservatives go, relatively benign. If food manufacturers end up reducing the amount, they will need to replace it with something else. What will that something else be?

When is CSPI going to go after something truly toxic, like sugar?

  • Fentry
  • February 12, 2008
  • 5:03 pm

Vegemite is disgusting–I much prefer Marmite!

I have the same question as Migraineur–I have read (but am not sure how to evaluate) claims that salt is not harmful to most people–that salt intake is primarily an issue to people with certain conditions, like perhaps high blood pressure.

When I cook at home I have come to the tentative conclusion that it’s nothing to worry about–

  • Marion
  • February 13, 2008
  • 10:01 pm

As with most nutrition evidence, the science of salt and high blood pressure is complicated, especially because it is so difficult to separate out the effects of salt itself from the foods it is eaten with. And most salt–77% or more–comes from processed foods. If you eat a lot of junk foods, you eat a lot of salt.

  • Anna
  • February 14, 2008
  • 2:21 am

That 77% in processed food products, is it really salt, sodium chloride, or is it sodium?

Not that I worry about salt. And Gary Taubes has an interesting take on the soft science behind the “salt” theory.

  • Mitzi
  • February 15, 2008
  • 10:25 pm

I didn’t really pay attention to salt until I married a man with hereditary high blood pressure. Diet (including drastically lowering salt) makes a 20 point difference in his blood pressure! I decided to eat the low sodium diet as well, and my asthma is less sensitive than it used to be (there is some medical evidence for the association). We don’t worry about salt, we just avoid it. Whole aisles of the grocery store are useless to us, but homemade has always been better anyway.

Leave a comment