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: 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--