Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Salt Ban

From The Washington Post:

In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.


The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.
"This is a 10-year program," one source said. "This is not rolling off a log. We're talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We're talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people."
The FDA, which regulates most processed foods, would be joined in the effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat and poultry.

Please remember one thing.....
These are the people who used to recommend between 6 and 11 servings per day of grains and starches, a habit that made many Americans fat enough to have our their gravitational fields.

I'm not betting that they're wrong. 
I don't doubt that they mean well. 
We should do all things in moderation, including salt intake, gambling, eating, spending, and bombing Arabs.  But this salt ban sounds like something they're going to screw up.  Fifty years from now, look for a lot of kids suffering from Hyponatremia.  Or asking their neighborhood drug pusher for salt tablets. 

1 comment:

That Damn Libertarian said...

This will conserve our limited salt resources for industrial use.