Politicians vs Science; the Surreal War on Salt

[Crazed Rabbit]

Some prominent politicians, primarily NYC mayor Bloomberg, have pushed to limit salt in food;

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- New York City health officials are pushing a nationwide plan to reduce the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant foods by 25 percent over the next five years, an effort that may help prevent heart attacks and stroke.

Sodium content is so high in ordinary foods that a deli sandwich alone may contain the total daily recommended amount for older adults, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said today in a statement. Under the proposed reduction, a quarter-pound cheeseburger would have about a fourth of the daily recommended salt. The burger contains more than a third of the allotment now.

The changes may help prevent some of the 23,000 deaths a year in New York from heart attacks and stroke, the city said. Americans consume about twice the recommended amount of salt each day, the city said. About 80 percent of the sodium is added to foods before they are sold and much comes from baked goods that don’t necessarily taste salty, the city said.

“The misconception is that if you’re not adding salt to your food, then you’re not a salt-eater,” said Rebecca Solomon, a nutritional coordinator for the surgical weight loss program at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “Salt is in all the things we rely on. It’s a preservative, and it’s an effective preservative, but unfortunately it doesn’t preserve our health.”

Not Enough

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who started his third term this year, has made sweeping changes to New York City’s health regulations including cutting trans fats in eating places and requiring fast-food restaurant menus to list calories.

They are joined by packs of morons purporting to support science;

New Campbell Soup CEO to Give Consumers Less Choice on Salt
New Campbell's CEO: Just add salt
Statement of CSPI Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson

July 13, 2011
When, in 2006, Campbell Soup Co. announced that it had reformulated many of its soups to contain less sodium, then-president of Campbell’s USA Denise Morrison told the Associated Press: “We look at it as the enabler to talk about the other health benefits of soup.”
Unfortunately for millions of hypertensive Americans who have the occasional can of Campbell soup, it’s going to be a lot harder for the company to talk about the health benefits of soup. And how patronizing for Morrison, now the new chief executive, to claim that adding more salt to Campbell’s soups gives consumers more choice. Consumers are always free to add salt, but it’s impossible for them to get rid of the new salt Campbell has added. Why not trust consumers to add as much or as little as they want?
If Campbell has reason to believe consumers don’t like the taste of their products, why resort to salt? Why not improve their soups with more and better-quality vegetables and chicken, or with herbs and spices? I suppose that’s a question that answers itself, and the answer is money. Campbell enjoys a huge profit margin selling what are often basically overpriced disease-promoting cans of salt and water.

Note; Campbells lowered salt content in response to pressure, found such soups didn't sell as well, and are now offering soups with the old amount of salt as well. Offering a wider choice of soups with regard to salt content is only less choice in the deluded minds of nanny-statists.

The thing of it is, though, that salt isn't unhealthy;

It's Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
By Melinda Wenner Moyer

For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

Of course nanny-state politicians have never let actual science get in the way of them rabidly demanding changes based on imagined dangers. In fact, it seems that the food pyramid trumpeted by the feds for decades has made america fatter, by saying carbs and grains are great, while fat is terrible. Not coincidently, it was made by the federal agency responsible for promoting US agriculture (and guess who grows a lot of grains?).

CR

[Major Robert Dump]

I tried to get it through my ex-wife's head that salty=good but she never wanted to try new things.

[Papewaio]

I'll wait for Rory on this one...

[Centurion1]

the only problem with sodium is when you have too much.

Its just like when kellogg made the damn food pyramid and now everyone thinks that meat is bad for you.

Go look up Kellogg and know that he is the man who the government uses for anecdotal evidence on what diet is best..........

[Lemur]

I tried to get it through my ex-wife's head that salty=good but she never wanted to try new things.

Try selling her on creamy.

[Cute Wolf]

actually, you could got more salt intake from water and soap components absorbed by skins, rather than food intakes. *seriously*

let's have wars against bathing then.

[Major Robert Dump]

Try selling her on creamy.

I did, and she would insist on crackers. I have to draw the kink line somewhere.

[InsaneApache]

When I went out to Corfu to see my dad the first time after my heart attack I stuck to the (lower) salt intake I'd been advised to take by my doctor. It nearly killed me.

[Centurion1]

When I went out to Corfu to see my dad the first time after my heart attack I stuck to the (lower) salt intake I'd been advised to take by my doctor. It nearly killed me.

In seriousness or you mean it sucked?

Sometimes lowering sodium intake CAN be a good thing.

[rory_20_uk]

I'll wait for Rory on this one...

Right...

For once I'm not going to go off on some sort of raving editorial, relying on prejudice and bigotry. Apologies.

Adverse Effects of Sodium Chloride on Bone in the Aging Human Population Resulting from Habitual Consumption of Typical American Diets Link

Sodium and Potassium in the Pathogenesis of Hypertension Link



So, in short there is a lot of contemporary evidence that shows excess Sodium Chloride is Bad, exacerbating a variety of different pathological processes.

Apologies if your "Nanny State" is trying to improve on the health.

[InsaneApache]

In seriousness or you mean it sucked?

Sometimes lowering sodium intake CAN be a good thing.

Yes I'm serious. After two days I felt ill. After three even more so. Pater advised me to have much salt as I wanted and I got better.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Right...

For once I'm not going to go off on some sort of raving editorial, relying on prejudice and bigotry. Apologies.

Adverse Effects of Sodium Chloride on Bone in the Aging Human Population Resulting from Habitual Consumption of Typical American Diets Link

Sodium and Potassium in the Pathogenesis of Hypertension Link



So, in short there is a lot of contemporary evidence that shows excess Sodium Chloride is Bad, exacerbating a variety of different pathological processes.

Apologies if your "Nanny State" is trying to improve on the health.

There was something in the papers recently saying that high Salt intake was not as dangerous as previously thought.

How much is too much?

[Centurion1]

Yes I'm serious. After two days I felt ill. After three even more so. Pater advised me to have much salt as I wanted and I got better.

I feel smug that once again this sort of crap can be disproved.

[gaelic cowboy]

Yes I'm serious. After two days I felt ill. After three even more so. Pater advised me to have much salt as I wanted and I got better.

Really you got sick on holidays and blame lack of salt, is it not more likely you were just not used to it.

[Major Robert Dump]

The body needs salt. The bigger you are or the more you sweat, the more salt you need. If you unintnetionally go without salt for a week, you will eventually get the urge to lick your own toes and you won't know why.

Anything in excess is bad. Following the standard RDA of sodium intake is not that hard. If you eat something salty for breakfast, then skip the salt at lunch and dinner.

Sodium does, however, cause an immediate spike in blood pressure and heart rate (along with excessive fat), so if one already has problems one should avoid large doses.

[Subotan]

Came into this thread expecting a piece on global warming.

I confess I'm a little bit disappointed.

[Ironside]

I feel smug that once again this sort of crap can be disproved.

Everything you need is dangerous in too high levels. What makes it tricky is in deciding on what's too high or not. Low salt intake while sweating a lot is a bad idea, but that doesn't say much about the intake sweetspot when you're not in a hot climate.


Rory, has things changed from before? I know that my uncle was to cut down on salt when had a high blood pressure and that they recommended potassium cloride instead of sodium cloride. But that diagram got nothing about sodium, only cloride and potassium. New research or simply something not put up on the graph?

[Subotan]

NaCl is Sodium Chloride.

[Ironside]

NaCl is Sodium Chloride.

Yes. And the Na+ ion is missing afterwards. They only talk about Cl-.

[rory_20_uk]

The article goes on to say that the body is designed to loose potassium easily and retain sodium, as human beings evolved in a potassium rich / sodium poor diet. The part about Na is on the left. Yes, things are more complex than "low Sodium is great" but it is one variable to be lowered.

Chloride is the main inorganic buffer in the blood. It will follow the sodium. You retain Na, you retain Cl, and it might be that the disruption is more due to the Cl than the Na directly.

For examples of intake in specific environments you'd have to look at different research papers. This one is clearly generic.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Right...

For once I'm not going to go off on some sort of raving editorial, relying on prejudice and bigotry. Apologies.

Adverse Effects of Sodium Chloride on Bone in the Aging Human Population Resulting from Habitual Consumption of Typical American Diets Link

Sodium and Potassium in the Pathogenesis of Hypertension Link

So, in short there is a lot of contemporary evidence that shows excess Sodium Chloride is Bad, exacerbating a variety of different pathological processes.

Apologies if your "Nanny State" is trying to improve on the health.

I guess I'll just have to post the article again;

Scientific tools have become much more precise since then, but the correlation between salt intake and poor health has remained tenuous. Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day. In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79. The review concluded that "intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials." A 2003 Cochrane review of 57 shorter-term trials similarly concluded that "there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake."

Studies that have explored the direct relationship between salt and heart disease have not fared much better. Among them, a 2006 American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. It found that the more sodium people ate, the less likely they were to die from heart disease. And a 2007 study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology followed 1,500 older people for five years and found no association between urinary sodium levels and the risk of coronary vascular disease or death. For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not.

Part of the problem is that individuals vary in how they respond to salt. "It's tough to nail these associations," admits Lawrence Appel, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University and the chair of the salt committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. One oft-cited 1987 study published in the Journal of Chronic Diseases reported that the number of people who experience drops in blood pressure after eating high-salt diets almost equals the number who experience blood pressure spikes; many stay exactly the same. That is because "the human kidney is made, by design, to vary the accretion of salt based on the amount you take in," explains Michael Alderman, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and former president of the International Society of Hypertension.

Some physicians argue that although tiny blood pressure drops will not have a big effect on individuals—they will not really affect your risk of having a heart attack—they may end up saving lives at the population level, in part because a small percentage of the population, including some African-Americans and elderly individuals, seem to be hypersensitive to salt. For instance, a study published in February 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that cutting salt intake by about 35 percent would save at least 44,000 American lives per year. But such estimates are not evidence, either; they are conjecture. And low-salt diets could have side effects: when salt intake is cut, the body responds by releasing renin and aldosterone, an enzyme and a hormone, respectively, that increase blood pressure.

Rather than create drastic salt policies based on conflicting data, Alderman and his colleague Hillel Cohen propose that the government sponsor a large, controlled clinical trial to see what happens to people who follow low-salt diets over time. Appel responds that such a trial "cannot and will not be done," in part because it would be so expensive. But unless we have clear data, evangelical antisalt campaigns are not just based on shaky science; they are ultimately unfair. "A great number of promises are being made to the public with regard to this enormous benefit and lives saved," Cohen says. But it is "based on wild extrapolations."

CR

[a completely inoffensive name]

OK, let's be honest here. Nutritional science is probably one of the most flip flopping sciences out there. Almost nothing is conclusive. Oh you shouldn't eat eggs so much because of their high cholesterol, but wait a paper just said that most cholesterol is produced naturally by the body, oh well eggs are not that bad, in fact eat more because they are nutritious in ways we didn't know before!

Politicians shouldn't make laws legislating nutrition not because the science is against them but because the results are not at the level needed to make solid judgements about food.

[Koga No Goshi]

I believe Rory got to this first, but I was about to say.... someone has somehow disproven that high sodium is correlated with blood and heart problems? That would be news to me and I imagine it would be news to most of the medical community as well.

You can say "salt is bad" and you can say "cutting down on salt in some foods won't necessarily make the nation healthier" and both can be true statements. Just because you cut down salt doesn't mean people aren't still going to go out and have fried chicken and deep fried coca-cola and deep-fried twinkies.

That does NOT, however, mean that there is no unhealthy upper limit on salt OR that salt in whatever amount has no negative health effects.

[Adrian II]

I believe Rory got to this first, but I was about to say.... someone has somehow disproven that high sodium is correlated with blood and heart problems? That would be news to me and I imagine it would be news to most of the medical community as well.

You can say "salt is bad" and you can say "cutting down on salt in some foods won't necessarily make the nation healthier" and both can be true statements. Just because you cut down salt doesn't mean people aren't still going to go out and have fried chicken and deep fried coca-cola and deep-fried twinkies.

That does NOT, however, mean that there is no unhealthy upper limit on salt OR that salt in whatever amount has no negative health effects.

You know what? I like to decide my choice of food for myself.

I'm with the Rabbit.

AII

[Koga No Goshi]

You know what? I like to decide my choice of food for myself.

I'm with the Rabbit.

AII

I sincerely don't understand how what you said responded to what I said. This thread just turned into people de-inventing the correlation between very high salt diets and undesirable health side effects... when those side effects are definitely real, regardless of how you want to choose to eat.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I believe Rory got to this first, but I was about to say.... someone has somehow disproven that high sodium is correlated with blood and heart problems? That would be news to me and I imagine it would be news to most of the medical community as well.

It's never been proven. Good grief, do people not even skim the articles I post?

You can say "salt is bad" and you can say "cutting down on salt in some foods won't necessarily make the nation healthier" and both can be true statements. Just because you cut down salt doesn't mean people aren't still going to go out and have fried chicken and deep fried coca-cola and deep-fried twinkies.

That does NOT, however, mean that there is no unhealthy upper limit on salt OR that salt in whatever amount has no negative health effects.

Saying salt is bad. Is. Not. Supported. By. Science. Some studies say it's bad, others find no evidence of harmful effects. With a lack of conclusive evidence, claiming salt is bad and we need to cut down on it is wrong.

This thread just turned into people de-inventing the correlation between very high salt diets and undesirable health side effects... when those side effects are definitely real, regardless of how you want to choose to eat.

Are you basing your opinion on vague recollections of news articles that poorly referenced scientific studies, or on having actually read scientific studies?

I ask because I posted an article from a scientific magazine discussing how the sum total of scientific research on salt and human health has not yielded conclusive results that salt is bad, and you act as though you've never heard of any study that said salt might be good, and as though you didn't even read the extensive quote I posted in this very thread.

Politicians shouldn't make laws legislating nutrition not because the science is against them but because the results are not at the level needed to make solid judgements about food.

I think when the science isn't conclusive, and the politicians act like it is, that means they're going against current scientific research.

CR

[Strike For The South]

This is the kind of micromanging that turns people off of the idea of government

:(

[Koga No Goshi]

It's never been proven. Good grief, do people not even skim the articles I post?



Saying salt is bad. Is. Not. Supported. By. Science. Some studies say it's bad, others find no evidence of harmful effects. With a lack of conclusive evidence, claiming salt is bad and we need to cut down on it is wrong.



Are you basing your opinion on vague recollections of news articles that poorly referenced scientific studies, or on having actually read scientific studies?

I ask because I posted an article from a scientific magazine discussing how the sum total of scientific research on salt and human health has not yielded conclusive results that salt is bad, and you act as though you've never heard of any study that said salt might be good, and as though you didn't even read the extensive quote I posted in this very thread.



I think when the science isn't conclusive, and the politicians act like it is, that means they're going against current scientific research.

CR

I'm basing my information off family and friends in the medical field, as well as a history of high blood pressure on my maternal side and the various things all of those people have been told by doctors. I was also personally advised by two doctors to lower sodium intake over a particular issue I was having (non heart related).

Sorry-- I trust a lifetime of that more than reading one or two skeptic articles off the internet where you can literally find people claiming a) the science supports x b) the science goes against x c) there's science both ways so probably neither is true on literally *any* topic. Especially when studies purporting that it's all junk science are being cited in an instance where people are annoyed with a "nanny state" move in a particular city or state.

[Adrian II]

I sincerely don't understand how what you said responded to what I said. This thread just turned into people de-inventing the correlation between very high salt diets and undesirable health side effects... when those side effects are definitely real, regardless of how you want to choose to eat.

I. Want.To.Judge.For. Myself.

Is that clear enough?

I don't want to be bullied by health officials who deny the excellent work of the Cochrane Collaboration, one of the few independent institutions left. For your information, Cochrane's meta-studies are famous throughout the world precisely because they cut through the science à la carte which pops up everywhere these days in support of health and food industries and government bureaucracies.

Have you ever looked into their work? Did you understand that scientific results can be counter-intuitive and that no amount of anecdote is going the change the outcome of evidence-based research? Do you even know what a meta-study is?

AII

[Centurion1]

I. Want.To.Judge.For. Myself.

Is that clear enough?

I don't want to be bullied by health officials who deny the excellent work of the Cochrane Collaboration, one of the few independent institutions left. For your information, Cochrane's meta-studies are famous throughout the world precisely because they cut through the science à la carte which pops up everywhere these days in support of health and food industries and government bureaucracies.

Have you ever looked into their work? Did you understand that scientific results can be counter-intuitive and that no amount of anecdote is going the change the outcome of evidence-based research? Do you even know what a meta-study is?

AII

But but but you don't understand your wrong. I have friends who are doctors and they said salt is bad for you. Why do you keep listening to these "other legitimate scientists"? I know i'm right so you need to listen to me.