It’s past time for the salt scaremongering to stop. Haven’t the food police read one new study after the next casting serious doubt on the food activists and bureaucrats who think salt is a silent “killer” that should be controlled? According to an author of recent research in the American Journal of Hypertension, “it is likely that reduced salt intake does not have a beneficial effect. On the contrary the net effect may be harmful.” No kidding.
Thankfully, Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman has been keeping up to date:
Classifying excess sodium consumption as a ‘public health’ danger mutilates a useful concept. Air pollution, West Nile virus and E. coli are matters of public health because they inflict harm on broad groups of people against their will and often without their knowledge. No one, however, ingests salt without raising fork to mouth.
If I burn toxic waste in my yard, I may force you to inhale compounds that cause illness or death. If I make a meal of pretzels and Virginia ham, by contrast, I pose no hazard to anyone but myself. You can avoid this “public health” threat without the FDA barging into your kitchen.
Eating foods with salt is not a public decision but a private one. That’s private, as in: Keep out.
Read the whole piece here.
