FDA looks to cut salt content in food

[rmt]

First it's fat, then they attack sugar - now salt. Please get out of my salty, fatty bacon. I regularly eat a 12 oz pack of bacon (hormone free), and my lab numbers are very good.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-looks-to-cut-salt-content-in-food-1464788924

[rmt]

Surprise #1: Those on a low sodium diet (less 3,000 mgs/day) did worse than those with moderate sodium intake (4,000 to 5,000 mg/d). That’s right: not only did the taste of their food suffer, but their health did too. This finding didn’t align well with current U.S. guidelines, which recommend a daily sodium intake of 2,300 mg (that’s roughly a teaspoon of salt). U.S. women average around 3,000 mg a day and men around 4,200 mg.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-bowron/lowsalt-diet-assaulted_b_10225484.html

[Shastafarian]

Why is everything an "attack" with you republicans? People who actually matter aren't attacking anything. But please by all means, continue to opine on things you don't understand.

[boutons_deux]

that's only one study saying lower salt is OK, so the resaults need to be reproduced (reproducibility is a big problem in science. nobody wants to do "sloppy seconds", esp when VRWC/Repugs have cut scientific research).

And weighed against all the studies for decades about high salt to be bad ...

Obviously, the average American is sick as a dog, 2/3 fat or obese, even higher for women, epidemics of obesity followed by CKD and CVD.

And they all eat almost nothing but packaged food or restaurant/junk food.

Standard American Diet, SAD, from BigFood is pathogenic, which is loved by BigPharma because BigPharma and corrupted docs have drugs-for-life "for what ails ya"

but let govt, or Michelle Obama, make any recommendation (not a regulation) about improving food and health, and you rightwingnutjobs' knees jerk (as conditioned with propaganda and LIES by the VRWC), you whine and scream that your fucking

"FREEDOMS are being DESTROYED! I'm armed and (dicklessly LIE that) I'm willing to DIE for HIGH SALT FOREVER!"

[CosmicCowboy]

Because none of these mongoloid pieces of shit are capable of thinking for themselves. They have to be fed their "outrage" to keep them in line. Look at retardmt here, actually so worthlessly stupid, and indoctrinated into the groupthink, she's arguing against removing chemically enhanced products from the food she eats and presumably feeds her children.

All for the sake of being loyal to the party. Jesus Christ what the fuck is wrong with these rejects? Retard you really need to stop breathing

We are all perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves, even assholes like you. If you want a low salt diet, fine. Do a low salt diet. Sodium is already disclosed on packaging and menus.

We don't need more laws and enforcement regulations/cost on something as silly as that. Maybe idiots like you need a Nanny State to take care of you, but I don't.

[CosmicCowboy]

Yeah those terrible laws, cuts into your child predator time you disgusting perverted sack of shit

and you are obviously what I was talking about. Holding companies that make the food you eat accountable for what they put in our food is government overreach.

the level of asshole stupidity that it requires to make that leap in "logic" is astounding. But the brain that thinks for you and retardmt and the rest tells you what to think and do. It absolves you of the responsibility to have to do so yourselves so it's ok.

Now stop molesting little boys you piece of filth

You really are dumb nanny state.

I watch my BP and it's a healthy 120/75.

If I want to eat some potato chips I don't want them tasting like cardboard because nanny state says so.

Speaking of blood pressure you need to watch yours with your ridiculously explosive and illogical anger rants.

[SnakeBoy]

that's only one study saying lower salt is OK, so the resaults need to be reproduced (reproducibility is a big problem in science. nobody wants to do "sloppy seconds", esp when VRWC/Repugs have cut scientific research).

And weighed against all the studies for decades about high salt to be bad ...

Obviously, the average American is sick as a dog, 2/3 fat or obese, even higher for women, epidemics of obesity followed by CKD and CVD.

And they all eat almost nothing but packaged food or restaurant/junk food.

Standard American Diet, SAD, from BigFood is pathogenic, which is loved by BigPharma because BigPharma and corrupted docs have drugs-for-life "for what ails ya"

but let govt, or Michelle Obama, make any recommendation (not a regulation) about improving food and health, and you rightwingnutjobs' knees jerk (as conditioned with propaganda and LIES by the VRWC), you whine and scream that your fucking

"FREEDOMS are being DESTROYED! I'm armed and (dicklessly LIE that) I'm willing to DIE for HIGH SALT FOREVER!"

Stop whining and start taking your statin like your Dr ordered.

[Th'Pusher]

We are all perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves, even assholes like you. If you want a low salt diet, fine. Do a low salt diet. Sodium is already disclosed on packaging and menus.

We don't need more laws and enforcement regulations/cost on something as silly as that. Maybe idiots like you need a Nanny State to take care of you, but I don't.

Roughly 75% of Adult Americans are overweight, obese or extremely obese.

I don't know that regulation is the right approach to fix that, but that a disgusting statistic.

[CosmicCowboy]

Roughly 75% of Adult Americans are overweight, obese or extremely obese.

I don't know that regulation is the right approach to fix that, but that a disgusting statistic.

when did salt start causing obesity?

[Th'Pusher]

when did salt start causing obesity?

I think you missed the broader point of the 'nanny state' introducing regulation in an effort to promote a healthier society and reduce the cost of medical care.

[DisAsTerBot]

or you could just look up salt obesity link. it's there.

[CosmicCowboy]

or you could just look up salt obesity link. it's there.

One study in the UK that correlates self reported salt intake with obesity? I just read the article and it was full of we think, might, and "don't know why". I would be willing to bet that if they had included "play video games" in the questionaire they would have found another correlation between playing video games and obesity as well...but would the video games cause the obesity?

[Th'Pusher]

One study in the UK that correlates self reported salt intake with obesity? I just read the article and it was full of we think, might, and "don't know why". I would be willing to bet that if they had included "play video games" in the questionaire they would have found another correlation between playing video games and obesity as well...but would the video games cause the obesity?


I think you missed the broader point of the 'nanny state' introducing regulation in an effort to promote a healthier society and reduce the cost of medical care.

[DisAsTerBot]

One study in the UK that correlates self reported salt intake with obesity? I just read the article and it was full of we think, might, and "don't know why". I would be willing to bet that if they had included "play video games" in the questionaire they would have found another correlation between playing video games and obesity as well...but would the video games cause the obesity?

that was the first link, yes. There's more. Check it out. Or you could just say stuff "like when did salt start causing obesity?"

[boutons_deux]

BigFood pollutes its crap with salt, grease, sugar, synthetic (BigChem) coloring, flavor enchancers, etc so much that it becomes addictive, as "studies have shown", and "normal", healthy fresh food tastes bland in over-stimulated, jaded mouths.

[CosmicCowboy]

that was the first link, yes. There's more. Check it out. Or you could just say stuff "like when did salt start causing obesity?"

I looked at several links and they all referred back to that one original study without the qualifications included in the original study.

I looked again and could find no studies that actually claimed a causal effect.

If you found one I would be more than willing to concede the point.

[SnakeBoy]

It's 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."

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

[Mitch]

I looked at several links and they all referred back to that one original study without the qualifications included in the original study.

I looked again and could find no studies that actually claimed a causal effect.

If you found one I would be more than willing to concede the point.

It's not directly a cause for obesity, tbh. If you eat enough to have a salt problem, you're either extremely unhealthy (eating those ramen cups ever day) or extremely fat. Salt itself just messes with your blood pressure and bloats you up a little

[boutons_deux]

a hugely misleading problem is stating "grams per day", when it should be "grams per Kg bodyweight"

anyway, nutritional studies are extremely difficult and therefore extremely expensive, with the big problem being "self reporting" and discipline of the participants.

[SpursforSix]

a hugely misleading problem is stating "grams per day", when it should be "grams per Kg bodyweight"

anyway, nutritional studies are extremely difficult and therefore extremely expensive, with the big problem being "self reporting" and discipline of the participants.

they need to cut your salt content