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The FDA is asking food makers and eating establishments to voluntarily reduce salt levels in their products to help reduce Americans' high salt intake.
The draft guidelines target these sources of salt with the goal of reducing Americans' average daily salt intake from 3,400 milligrams (mg) a day to 2,300 mg a day.
[...] Currently, 90 percent of American adults consume more salt than recommended, the FDA pointed out.
[...] The public has until the fall to comment on the FDA's voluntary salt guidelines for food manufacturers and restaurants.
The FDA claims that people can always add more salt to their food, which is true, but they ignore that salt changes how food is cooked and adding salt to the surface of food affects taste differently than when it is evenly distributed.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=197193
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_salt
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:02PM
It's entirely possible to make great food with little of either of these. The trouble is that it either A) spoils much faster, B) must use more or different spicing/flavoring - increasing cost - or C) must be better and more flavorful in the first place.
Then, let's say you do this. Your competitor uses more salt, their stuff tastes subjectively better, gets better reviews, and you go out of business.
I could be wrong, but I don't think voluntary reduction is going to cut it. They're going to have to outright ban high fructose corn syrup to get it off the shelves, especially the budget shelves, and again anything short of a mandate isn't likely to change salt usage either.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Francis on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:09PM
There's no scientific basis for the limits that the fda is looking for. Anybody who isn't sensitive to sodium with high blood pressure shouldn't be cutting back.
Low sodium levels are more dangerous than high ones. Listing the sodium contents is more than sufficient to deal with the health impacts of sodium.
(Score: 5, Informative) by physicsmajor on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:23PM
I do have to disagree with you here. There's a tremendous amount of literature in nephrology (that's the kidney doctors) pointing directly at sodium for causing and exacerbating hypertension, renal disease, and related conditions. I attended the American Society of Nephrology conference once, and the one thing which stuck with me above all else was how much and how often sodium was mentioned. Maybe not all that research is perfect, but the consensus there and very much in accord.
It's hard to design truly robust trials for sodium intake, because it's everywhere. Short of putting people in completely controlled environments, you just aren't sure how well they followed your diet. That's part of why we don't have the highest level of evidence for this stuff. However, there is retrospective stuff pointing in the direction of a long, slow degeneration. Eating right all along should be helpful, not just after you get diagnosed with hypertension.
Both low and high sodium levels can kill you, but those are rare medical conditions which are almost never directly related to diet (save dehydration or perhaps polydipsia). Eat anything close to a regular diet and you'll get plenty of sodium, your body (kidneys mostly) will regulate the rest.
As for simply listing the sodium contents - we've done that for decades, doesn't seem to be effective.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Francis on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:44PM
Did you bother to read my post? There is zero evidence to support the targets being set in the absence of elevated blood pressure. But they're handing out these irresponsible guidelines for everybody. And even in those cases you can't assume that it's excessive sodium when there's a balance that has to be kept between the electrolytes.
What's more, intake is a shitty way of monitoring it. Some people retain more than others and some folks retain less, barring specific test results showing that a person has excessive sodium it's malpractice to suggest lowering it. I know that when I'm stressed I retain less of it than I normally do.
People should be given the amount of sodium in their food, but unlike excessive sodium, insufficient sodium kills quickly and with little warning.
It's both irresponsible and dangerous to make these blanket recommendations based upon questionable science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:40AM
One of the biggest problems with the FDA is that they make blanket recommendations and impose blanket requirements. Or they make it prohibitively expensive to overcome their blanket requirements by requiring a prescription every time you need something or they outright ban something for everyone for no good reason.
I recently briefly commented about it here regarding red yeast rice and Lovastatin.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160725/09460835061/internet-things-is-security-privacy-dumpster-fire-check-is-about-to-come-due.shtml#c154 [techdirt.com]
I think it's a combination of both irresponsibility and corruption. I do not need the government managing my health for me. It's not like they can manage anything else well so why should I believe they can manage my health.
"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
~Thomas Jefferson
(Score: 1) by driven on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:27AM
Fact: Too much of any one thing is bad for you. In my opinion, the risk of having too _little_ sodium in your body these days (for the average person) is small and probably means they aren't eating many modern foods. There is a lot of salt in so many things: soup, bread, prepared meat, snack foods, restaurant food, milk and cheese, to name a few.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:11PM
I tend to agree, and by example I point to all the years of constant wall to wall ranting about the cholesterol content in food. Suddenly its all turned around and the cholesterol intake limits are deprecated, and such intake cholesterol was found to never reach the blood stream.
But while cholesterol was on the FDA shitlist every doctor, health blogger, and Mom was parroting the nonsense, and it was settled science.
Even with high blood pressure, most people are NOT sensitive to salt. There are a small minority of high blood pressure patients who are, And these are easily spotted.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:50PM
too much: you are hurting yourself and might ultimately die from related causes
too little: oops, you suddenly died
To get quick death via too much salt is not easy. You'd have to be eating bowls of it for breakfast.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:09AM
Back in the Air Force during a long march we were made to carry salt packets and mix a little bit with our water during canteen breaks. The reason why is because, before they did that, a trainee had too little sodium and ended up dying as a result of brain swelling.
As somebody who loooooves salty food (in before cocksuckler nut swallower etc.) it is possible to achieve the same effect using herbs and spices, but as another user pointed out above, it requires a lot more cooking savvy and jacks up the food cost. Fat chicks are good cooks for obvious reasons, so it is difficult to get a low-sodium, well-seasoned meal without boning one.
I like what V8 juice does with their low-sodium juice - instead of sodium, they use lots of potassium, and it seems people just don't get enough of that nowadays, especially drunks like me who eat more than enough sodium but piss out all their potassium.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:21AM
Hey, ordinary-sized women can cook just as well. Okay, so 6' is bigger than "ordinary" but I love to cook, and will spoil my girlfriend rotten (but healthily!) once we're finally moved in together. In fact, good home cooking is how I manage to maintain a healthy weight.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:54AM
Go to a restaurant, check whether the cook is fat, eat or don't.
Why get the cow for free when you can buy the milk?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:44AM
I can understand deboning pork (...mmmm... bacon), but a chicken? Way too much effort.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:09AM
My admittedly anecdotal observation is that it seems food manufacturers have been gradually increasing the amount of sodium in our diets over the last couple of decades. It used to be that a prepared food that had around 20% of the US RDA of sodium per serving was considered wildly excessive. Today, it is hard to find prepared foods with US RDA of sodium below 30%. Many have US RDA of sodium of 40%, or more! Add to this that, now, food manufacturers seem to be finding cute inventive ways to obfuscate how much sodium is in their prepared foods (e.g., stating that each "serving" has 25% of the US RDA of sodium but a single prepared package actually has 2 servings, etc.).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:01AM
Yes, and then further research showed that all of that applies only to a small portion of the population. This 'suggestion;' is like banning lactose because some portion of the population shouldn't have it.
Big surprise, the FDA didn't get the memo.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:39AM
Alright - so how many people suffer from the consequences of low sodium content? And - how difficult is it to remedy that situation?
From time to time, I feel the effects of low sodium. Usually, I can grab a Gatorade, drink some of it, and those missing electrolytes are replenished pretty quickly.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:19PM
The point is that there's no point in cutting down on sodium unless you specifically need to. It's definitely not hard to increase your levels once you become aware of it. The problem is that if you're skating by on the recommended amount if there's anything that causes you to sweat more or pee more, you can wind up washing the last bit out of the system without realizing it. And sodium is vitally important for thinking, so you're less likely to properly recognize the problem.
The more sodium you have in the body, the further you are away from having to worry about deficiency. That's not to say that people should be consuming massive amounts of sodium to avoid getting low, but it is plenty of reason for people to ignore the recommendations if they don't personally have blood pressure problems and excessive levels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:20PM
Physicsmajor, based on your name I suspect you are projecting the methods of physics onto health/nutrition/medical research. These are not "science" in the usual sense. What goes on here is a series of fads while nothing ever really gets figured out. I wouldn't worry too much about any chatter coming from those people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:47PM
These are not "science" in the usual sense.
Yes, just Francis making stuff up, and some AC upset that there is no Anthropogenic Global Warming angle to this discussion. Everyone knows that physics has nothing to do with chemistry, and chemistry has nothing to do with organic chemistry, and organic chemistry has nothing to do with nutrition, and nutrition has nothing to do with health. It is all just a vast left wing conspiracy.
Given the quality of comments on matters of science here on SoylentNews, I expect that soon we will get all our science stories from the Daily Mail, NY Post, Washington Times, Fox News, and Brietbart. Or we will learn all about the Electric universe and Rick Santorum Oil.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:53PM
These things are all related, the methods of the researchers are very dissimilar though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:01AM
Everyone knows that physics has nothing to do with chemistry, and chemistry has nothing to do with organic chemistry, and organic chemistry has nothing to do with nutrition, and nutrition has nothing to do with health.
These things are all related, the methods of the researchers are very dissimilar though.
Maybe, maybe not. What is your point, AC? That science is not reliable? That we don't have to listen to those science-type bureaucrats with their "studies" and "facts", because, freedom? That we can believe whatever we want, regardless of what is actually reality? Because reality has a well-known liberal bias, you know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:11AM
No, science has proven itself reliable. As I said, the problem with some research is that it's not science (ie rarely is anything replicated, rarely is anything predicted with any kind of precision, etc), so you get fads rather than accumulation of knowledge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:21AM
As I said, the problem with some research is that it's not science (ie rarely is anything replicated, rarely is anything predicted with any kind of precision, etc), so you get fads rather than accumulation of knowledge.
Some research? Exactly what research do you refer to? We are talking the FDA, USian Food and Drug Administration, not Paleo Diet or homeopathy. Do you think the FDA operates on the basis of fads?
I think you need to wave your hands away from such general discounting of nutritional research, and towards some specifics, or you are just blowing smoke or trying to start a fad. Anti-science fad.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday July 27 2016, @04:55AM
I think that the problem has been a lack of science in the recommendations. How many diet recommendations have been shown to be useless when actually subjected to experimentation in the last few decades. Science is good, but it has been seriously lacking when it comes to nutrition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:31PM
Science is the PROBLEM. Let the Free Market solve it! It will efficiently find the best nutrition for you and your family, in 233 delicious flavors. Order now and get a free ab rocker(TM).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:24AM
Argumentum ad verecundiam, magister?
Are they really so infallible? (fat bad, sugar good for decades)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:59AM
Scientific consensus changes with further research. Doesn't mean all research is "different" or that the scientific consensus is a "fad". All I am asking for is specifics, not some kind of vaxxer argument!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:31AM
Too bad that scientific consensus of a time may end indistinguishable from as a fad, however amount of honest work is poured in that research - that's inherently linked with the human limitations, can't get around them.
And it's also true that some sciences are more prone to quasi-fads, especially those sciences which need to rely mainly on observations rather the experiments (astrophysics, weather, anything that relates with socials).
I'll let this [xkcd.com] for you as an exercise in grokking - set aside the humour and feel the reason there's a grain of truth in there
(epistemology - by no means a science itself, you already know that, but at least it organizes a bit the view over science).
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:12PM
Do you think the FDA operates on the basis of fads?
On these matters, yes, absolutely, emphatically. Fads and probably the corn lobby.
Pretty much every diet recommendation out there from Paleo (which region's Paleo???) to Atkins to fat-causes-fat are fads. It's pretty much all cargo cult science. Remember the food pyramid? The closest thing I can find to something resembling science is the research that's gone into showing added sugar may be a big problem. (Of course the people who go on about fructose!!!eleven! corn syrup!!eleven! seem to have troubles both with orgchem. One would find it difficult to find an apple without fructose. And don't even get me started on the gluten crowd—people with celiac disease excluded.)
I think you're confusing the more important aspects of the FDA such as vetting drugs with its apparent tendency to want to play mommy and create One Diet to Rule Them All.
The FDA clamps down on fat, salt, cholesterol, whatever the “bad” thing in food is this week, and food manufacturers just keep adding sugar to compensate. Then we find out a decade later that “whoops! we goofed! it's actually good for you!” Except the low-fat, no-salt, sugar-loaded crap doesn't come off the shelves, and the FDA is even slower getting the memo.
I'm perfectly aware of how science gets done, and being wrong is part of that process. There's nothing wrong with being wrong when we're doing science. We need more than longitudinal studies that too often mix up correlation and causation (it's knee-jerk here for a reason) and meta-analyses before we start calling common components in food “bad.” For longitudinal studies especially, anybody with an agenda can cook up one of those to show whatever the hell they wanted to show. I'm sure I could show bacon++ having great health benefits if Soylent would like to find my research!
I don't even like salty foods, but my body doesn't retain sodium well, especially when it gets hot and humid enough that I can't move without being drenched in sweat. So I end up drinking Gatorade (it's got 'lectrolytes, apparently what my body craves). That's the advice they gave me when they released me from the hospital after I'd been there for 5 days with low sodium.
I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune if they'd told me, oh, you have $some_rare_condition, but they didn't.
Now I'm not (that) unreasonable. If we get single payer healthcare, I'll go back to being a good little girl and avoiding salt, as long as they're able to keep giving me a private room whenever I need a saline drip for a few days. …and put me farther away from that guy who showed up at 6 and yelled at his grandmother for 3 hours every day… could do without that. It's kind of relaxing, not having a care in the world for a few days…. If I'm paying, I'd rather go on a month-long luxury cruise for the same price.
Really, the best thing that the FDA could do if it wanted to promote a healthy diet would be to convince people to or help people learn how to cook their own food again. It really all starts with a well-equipped (this can be done well enough on the cheap too, nothing fancy needed), organized, and clean kitchen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @10:35PM
By all means, find it already.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:41AM
Whoosh...
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 4, Informative) by Francis on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:47AM
Not really. I've had hyponatremia and it's a life threatening condition. I don't go out of my way to consume sodium, so during a great wave I washed and sweated what little sodium I had out of my body.
Even physicsmajor conceded the point that the damage isn't the sodium, it's the blood pressure. As in, sodium doesn't harm people that don't have elevated blood pressure. The traditional explanation for watching sodium levels is that it causes high bloodpressure.
And if you're not looking at your electrolyte levels you might Not have enough sodium to safely reduce. Competent doctors would check the levels as increased potassium it's sometimes the correct choice rather than decreasing sodium.
But yes, clearly I'm making this up because the doctors have a great track record inn dietary advise.
(Score: 4, Touché) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:04AM
See? Not that hard to give some background, evidence, and an argument for a position. Well done, Francis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:28AM
Great! I know! I'll stop watching sodium levels, watching them increases blood pressure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:34PM
Just like falling out of an airplane without a parachute. It isn't the fall that kills you, it's the landing.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:30PM
That's not even remotely analogous.
The point I was making is that if you haven't got elevated blood pressure or other medical conditions then there's really no upside to reducing the sodium intake as you're probably getting the correct amount. The recommendations make no allowances for the time of the year, your physical activity level, how much you piss out or sweat out and your kidneys' tendency to retain or let it through.
As such it's an irresponsible recommendation. It also fails to account for the physical size of the person eating the salt. A 100# woman is going to require less sodium in her diet than a 250# football player would.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @11:30PM
You may not be aware of this but salt is an acquired [jamanetwork.com] taste. [wikipedia.org] We develop the taste for salt by being exposed to it. You may also be surprised to learn that it can also be "unacquired". If food manufacturers were to gradually reduce the amount of salt they put into their prepared foods (e.g., cutting the amount of sodium in their prepared foods by a few percent each year over a ten year period), they could significantly cut the amount of sodium in the diet of the population at large and most would not even notice the difference. Unfortunately, most food manufacturers seem to only be interested in short term gain, so I think you are right that voluntary reduction is not going to cut it. They will probably have to forced to do this by imposing regulations. There will inevitably be a lot of wailing and screaming about "big nanny government". The cycle of rage will begin yet again. Hmmmm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:06AM
We (60-ish couple) cook most of our meals from fresh ingredients. Yes it takes some time, but we enjoy the process. For ingredients like canned tomatoes or chicken stock we usually manage to find no/low added salt brands. Our food tastes great (to us) using a variety of other spicy flavors. Sometimes a little added salt is a treat, but it doesn't take much.
Eating out, it's common to feel that the food has been over salted...often requiring several glasses of water to go with dinner.
Why do we bother? Years ago I noticed that my blood pressure was going up. I was going through a medium bag of some salty chips every few days--cut them out and my blood pressure dropped 10+ points in a week or two. Obviously I'm one of the sensitive ones.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday July 27 2016, @04:07AM
Actually you can lower your blood pressure by 20~30 points by meditating a few minutes. If you drive on a freeway to get to your doctors office, you can suddenly be pre-hypertensive.
We do need a certain amount of salt to stay healthy. If you work or do heavy exercise on a hot day, you sweat out a lot of salt. then you need the salt pills they give you in boot camp and high school football workouts. If you sit on your arse in an office or hacking code, you don't sweat out very much salt. So if you eat a lot of prepared foods with lots of salt you get too much. And you probably wind up hypertensive.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:00PM
They're going to have to outright ban high fructose corn syrup to get it off the shelves
Or, in a pinch, they could stop "protecting" the American sugar industry (at the expense of everybody else) with the sugar tariff!
Not sure that'll achieve what you're looking for, though.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings