The war against salt – so you were passive for smoking and transfats, so here comes the next wave. There is no such thing as coincidence – a week after Mayor Bloomberg announced his war on salt, the NY Times lets the world know that the New England Journal of Medicine, in cooperation with UCSF, Stanford and Columibia has concluded if everyone was forced to eat less salt, about 50,000 people a year could have their date of death delayed.
A regulatory intervention designed to achieve a reduction in salt intake of 3 g per day would save 194,000 to 392,000 quality-adjusted life-years and $10 billion to $24 billion in health care costs annually.
The entire conclusion is based on computer models. There is no clinical trial here – no actual people reducing salt intake in a double blind study and looking at mortality and morbidity of an actual population over time. The only thing missing from the study is the “hockey stick” diagram.
Scientific conclusion is about using the scientific method, not using politicall tactics to implement authoritarian policies without evidence.
From the Journal of Human Hypertension, one of the references cited in the article:
Several countries have already reduced salt intake, for example, Japan (1960-1970), Finland (1975 onwards) and now the United Kingdom. The challenge is to spread this out to all other countries.
i’m skeptical of this anti-salt stuff and according to some in alternative medicine, the key might be the quality of the salt you get…they recommend air-dried sea salt instead of the finely ground, high heat treated and iodized salt that we get…they say the salt you consume forms the -Cl portion of the HCL that your stomach produces for digestion, and therefor the quality is very important….not sure how much of it i believe but i have been looking at buying some of this stuff on Amazon at like 5 lbs for $25 or so, just for the hell of it…
most of our health problems are more likely related to sitting in cubicles all day instead of doing some actual physical labor….
Be careful that you don’t remove iodine from your diet by doing that. Without adequate isodine, your thyroid gland will enlarge – and then the doctors can cut it out and put you on synthetic thyroid medication for the rest of your life.
A little more “back story” about iodine, and the poll I created about Sea Salt. Back when I was having nurses visiting every couple days to take my blood pressure, one of them mentioned I should use Sea Salt. I asked why (I’m such a pest). She said that Sea Salt is saltier, so you use less of it. I asked her if Sea Salt contains iodine (it doesn’t) – that had never occurred to her, apparently.
Another of the bunch told me I needed to throw out all my non-stick pans because they cause cancer. I considered asking her if I should also throw out my aluminum pans since they cause Alzheimers, but decided there was no point in making it a bigger issue. I miss so much by not watching Oprah.
yeah, the thing is that i have borderline hypothyroid, took meds a few years and now doc says i prob don’t need to – and i have eaten tons of iodized salt in my life…im not sure how much of this alternative medicine is “quackery” but it wasn’t too long ago(1970’s or so?) that mainstream medicine insisted that a person’s diet had absolutely nothing to do with their health and i think it was the alternative med that started to bring some of these ideas to the forefront…and i try not to use the non-stick pans anymore as that coating always flakes off so i figure it ends up in my food…aluminum seems to have been a false alarm for now i guess, but i dont really like aluminum for cooking…..i like stainless steel and cast iron but then somebody pointed out that SS has chromium or nickel in it so i guess you can’t win on this stuff…
Just came from the supermarket, where “Low Salt” signs have sprung up everywhere. This is certainly well organized. I noted however that the signs for “low carb pizza” from a few years ago are no longer around.