Article: Less salt in your food?

The government is consulting within the food industry on the reduction of salt content in food, the health department said on Thursday.

"This is important, to achieve the goals we want to achieve," spokesman Fidel Hadebe said.
 
So we just have to add more from our own supply? Hope they fix Marmite spread.
What about chips and salt snacks? I just hope they (the idiots) do not want to "regulate" those.
 
People are lazy and food companies take advantage of it. As long as some people have something they can shove down their throats, that took no effort to make, their happy. It's these idiots that need government protection.
 
cpu. said:
People are lazy and food companies take advantage of it. As long as some people have something they can shove down their throats, that took no effort to make, their happy. It's these idiots that need government protection.
Click to expand...

If that is the case what about regulating the sugar content? Thus no more sweets, no more salty snacks, no more freedom of choice. I agree about the labeling of the food products indicating the exact contents but regulating...what nonesense?
 
It's Time to End the War on Salt

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt

The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
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.

Fears over salt first surfaced more than a century ago. In 1904 French doctors reported that six of their subjects who had high blood pressure—a known risk factor for heart disease—were salt fiends. Worries escalated in the 1970s when Brookhaven National Laboratory's Lewis Dahl claimed that he had "unequivocal" evidence that salt causes hypertension: he induced high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. (Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day.)

Dahl also discovered population trends that continue to be cited as strong evidence of a link between salt intake and high blood pressure. People living in countries with a high salt consumption—such as Japan—also tend to have high blood pressure and more strokes. But as a paper pointed out several years later in the American Journal of Hypertension, scientists had little luck finding such associations when they compared sodium intakes within populations, which suggested that genetics or other cultural factors might be the culprit. Nevertheless, in 1977 the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl's work.

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."
Click to expand...
 
wily me said:
If that is the case what about regulating the sugar content? Thus no more sweets, no more salty snacks, no more freedom of choice. I agree about the labeling of the food products indicating the exact contents but regulating...what nonesense?
Click to expand...
Sugar will be next - if they follow the UK's example.

Since I cut (to a minimum) the salt I eat my wrists don't ache anymore. Considering the benefit to the public health sector, I support the regulation of salt. It's less salt, not no salt. Less sugar, not no sugar.
 
Garyvdh, only thing that doesnt fit nicely in those quotes is that it seems to test with sodium instead of salt (soduim chloride)
 
We need certain amounts of salt, this wouldn't be the banning of it entirely but just regulating how much can be put in certain products I would imagine, which is a good thing. Too much NaCl can cause all sorts of nasty things from hypertension and heart attacks to water retention and strokes. A lot of ready-to-eat and other fast food products contain stupid amounts of the stuff which is obviously not a good thing. So perhaps regulating the amount, and making people aware of the amount of it on the packaging would be a good thing.
 
wily me said:
Thus no more sweets, no more salty snacks, no more freedom of choice.
Click to expand...

Talking about choice... the amount of salt in fast foods limits my choice to eat foods with less salt. Hell, they could at least cook with far less salt, and then offer you a salt packet if you wanted it. You can add salt yourself, you can't remove it.

It goes both ways.

/said mostly for debate... I don't care much for fast foods anyhow... and love a pack of salt and vinegar crisps every now and then.
 
As Gary has pointed out, the evidence that salt is bad for you is tenuous at best. The reason why we consume so much salt is actually because of the preservative content in most pre-packaged foods. Because the majority of effective preservatives are extremely bitter and salt is added to counter this. Salt works by blocking the bitter receptors on the tongue which therefore inhibits the bitter taste. However they require a large amount of salt to do this.

Regarding this action, there are a few factors to consider. On one hand we should be given the choice using clearly marked packaging. On the other, by enforcing this, they convince the manufacturers to start using fewer preservatives in their food and to rather change their processes. Pasteurisation kills nearly all bacteria and if the processing plant is kept very clean, there is little chance of contamination of bacteria that can withstand these higher temperatures.

This does however lead to an increase in food costs as this is an extremely costly affair for a food processor who is used to adding preservatives. However this is a double-edged sword, because certain food items actually require curing in salt as a preservative, such as ham. In the UK when a similar policy was adopted, items like ham, bacon and other naturally cured meat products were suddenly banned, and the manufacturers turned to chemical preservation and flavourants instead.

So looking at the industry holistically, one comes to realise that salt is pretty much the cornerstone of it all and that by trying to blanket-control salt intake is a farcical pipe-dream. We as consumers need to use it in moderation - to understand its properties - to understand that it is a massive enhancer of flavour - to realise that salt changes the chemical compounds of most ingredients and therefore adds new and different layers of flavour to food. Just like anything else, understand why you're using it and do so properly...
 
shogun said:
Talking about choice... the amount of salt in fast foods limits my choice to eat foods with less salt. Hell, they could at least cook with far less salt, and then offer you a salt packet if you wanted it.
Click to expand...

That's actually not true. The addition of salt during the cooking process changes the properties of volatile molecules in particular, as well as the chemical make-up of most of these ingredients. It also wouldn't solve the issue of completely masking the flavour of preservatives in food. The entire flavour profile of the food will change, which is something a franchise would never want...
 
cpu. said:
Sugar will be next - if they follow the UK's example.

Since I cut (to a minimum) the salt I eat my wrists don't ache anymore. Considering the benefit to the public health sector, I support the regulation of salt. It's less salt, not no salt. Less sugar, not no sugar.
Click to expand...

It should be your choice if you want less salt in your food. Not the governments choice to make for you.
 
cpu. said:
Sugar will be next - if they follow the UK's example.

Since I cut (to a minimum) the salt I eat my wrists don't ache anymore. Considering the benefit to the public health sector, I support the regulation of salt. It's less salt, not no salt. Less sugar, not no sugar.
Click to expand...

Not to sounds facetious here, but why would ordinary salt intake impact your bones? I'm assuming the wrist issue is not muscular, considering there are no muscles in your wrists and therefore must be a bone issue - possibly calcification, arthritis? The research about salt inhibiting calcium absorption is ongoing and to date, inconclusive. The only other issue with salt is that it may potentially inhibit potassium absorption in the kidneys from what I've learned. But this is all speculative.

If it is having a positive impact on you, then that's fantastic. Maybe there is some truth to the salt myths - there usually is an element of truth in every myth. But the salt debate will continue for some time to come.

One last thing to take note of is that you made the conscious decision to reduce your salt intake, for health reasons specific to you. Those same health reasons do not apply to me and in fact, the majority of the country's population. So why should the government dictate to us the amount of salt we can consume from processed products when in fact this decision should best be left to the individual? Especially considering that for many people, they require a fair amount of salt intake on a daily basis...
 
DJ... said:
That's actually not true. The addition of salt during the cooking process changes the properties of volatile molecules in particular, as well as the chemical make-up of most of these ingredients. It also wouldn't solve the issue of completely masking the flavour of preservatives in food. The entire flavour profile of the food will change, which is something a franchise would never want...
Click to expand...

Well if they want to completely mask this (http://www.parent24.com/Preschool_2-6/care_nutrition/Kids-forced-to-eat-pink-slime-20120315) I fully understand.

ugh.

A lot of the time, salt is just added for flavour. Take McD's chips... they add salt after the chips are cooked. That cannot be for the "volatile cooking process", but more likely for flavour. My position would be to only use the salt that is REQUIRED, and leave off the excess salt. The salt people want to add for taste, they can add. So if regulation to lower the salt content is required, within the parameters of safe food preparation (which can easily be done), then at least everyone gets some choice in the matter.
 
shogun said:
Well if they want to completely mask this (http://www.parent24.com/Preschool_2-6/care_nutrition/Kids-forced-to-eat-pink-slime-20120315) I fully understand.

ugh.

A lot of the time, salt is just added for flavour. Take McD's chips... they add salt after the chips are cooked. That cannot be for the "volatile cooking process", but more likely for flavour. My position would be to only use the salt that is REQUIRED, and leave off the excess salt. The salt people want to add for taste, they can add. So if regulation to lower the salt content is required, within the parameters of safe food preparation (which can easily be done), then at least everyone gets some choice in the matter.
Click to expand...

When it comes to chips, we as consumers expect them to taste like salt. That is our perception of what chips should be, in general. Regarding the rest of your post, it seems to just overlook and ignore everything I said in my previous post, so we'll just have to leave it at that then I suppose...
 
Meh they should just label the salt content on food or maybe a restaurant should have one health option?
 
Lol at the anti-government posts. Perhaps the less chemical enhancers in mass available food, the better?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X