A new study says that high-salt diets may not be as harmful as once thought. Research Associate Daniel Compton takes a look. He also points out that, even if salt is a health hazard, regulating salt intake probably won’t work as planned.
salt
From The New York Times:
A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald’s must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds (30 kilograms) while working there for a dozen years. The 32-year-old man said he felt forced to sample the food each day to ensure quality standards remained high . . .The man also said the company offered free lunches to employees, adding to his caloric intake while on the job.
This is sheer idiocy. McDonald’s does not make people fat. I lost 10 pounds while working at McDonalds for a summer. McDonald’s food is not any fattier than the food served by many other restaurants. The foie gras served in fancy restaurants is much fattier than hamburgers. Quiche Lorraine is also fattier than a hamburger. Food snobs may not like proletarian food like hamburgers, but then, I am indifferent to foie gras, which tastes a lot like canned dog food to me. Should I be able to keep food snobs from eating foie gras, just because it’s very fatty? (Ironically enough, my wife is French, so I’ve been exposed to foie gras a lot.)
There is now a big movement afoot to tax fast food in the pursuit of mythical public health benefits. The government is also moving to restrict the salt content of food, which could lead to increased obesity rates, more heart attacks, and “higher death rates among some individuals,” and make it harder to market low-fat foods.
There are increasing calls for the government to restrict salty food and fast-food restaurants, and tax fast food, to curb obesity. This is especially true in the aftermath of the passage of Obamacare, which will shift more health care costs to taxpayers, creating the appearance of a public-health rationale for restricting what people eat. One city even imposed a moratorium on new fast food restaurants.
But there is little evidence that fast food causes obesity. Eating a hamburger won’t make you fat — as I noted earlier, hamburgers are healthier and less fatty than other foods not hated by food snobs, like Quiche Lorraine. (I had four quarter-pound cheeseburgers last night, with fries — the usual number when I have hamburgers for dinner – and I am not fat; although admittedly, the burgers were home-made, and thus made of leaner ground beef than that used in many restaurant burgers.)
Even if people who eat at fast-food restaurants are fatter than the public at large, there is little reason to believe that the fast food made them fat. It is more likely a manifestation of the socioeconomic class of people who comprise most of their customers. Less affluent people tend to be fatter in America than more affluent people, even in areas with fewer fast-food restaurants – and people who eat out frequently may well be fatter than those who don’t, regardless of whether they eat at a fast-food restaurant or a more upscale restaurant.
And many people who eat at fast-food restaurants are not fat at all. For example, when I ate mostly at McDonald’s (because I worked there at the time), I lost 10 pounds over the course of a summer. Since such people are not overweight, taxing the fast food they eat will do nothing to reduce obesity. It simply imposes a regressive tax on people of modest means.
The FDA is now seeking to cut the amount of salt on our food, even though prevailing salt levels do no harm to most people, and cutting salt consumption will actually harm some people. Ironically, if salt levels are curbed, people will compensate by eating fattier food. There seems to be a trade-off between salt and fat. Low-fat foods sometimes contain added salt to make them palatable to dieters. When I lived in Irvine, California, where the shelves of the grocery store seemed full of low-fat foods, I checked the sodium levels. I found that the sodium levels of low-fat foods were slightly higher than the regular or full-fat versions. If the high sodium levels of such low-fat foods are forced down by FDA regulations, people may react by returning to consumption of the fattier foods, resulting in rising obesity levels. The government’s anti-salt crusade may thus result in its anti-fat crusade backfiring.
To prove a friend wrong, New York artist Sally Davies left a happy out on her counter for six months. Yesterday, several media outlets reporting on the shocking results: the burger and fries showed very few signs of decomposition.
The tone of the articles as well as the response to the Happy Meal Art Project have ranged from shock and amusement to horror.
A Triumph of Food Technology
While it may seem “unnatural,” food preservation is responsible for a substantial increase in the quality of life for human beings. Salting meats, dehydration, and canning have significantly contributed to the increase in the quality of food and the prevention of disease. That Sally’s burger and fries show no signs of mold or rot indicates that they resisted spores for the entire six months. That is an amazing achievement! A human being could presumably consume that meal, absorb the calories, turn the calories into energy, all without becoming ill. Most likely, the salt in the foods has caused it to be resistant to mold spores and bacterial growth. Though it isn’t certain that the food is free of bacteria, it is more likely that the six-month-old dehydrated burger has less bacterial growth than a week old tomato.
What happens when we consume foods with bacteria growing in them? A few infectious diseases are caused by such bacterial growth, such as cholera, anthrax, respiratory infection, and tuberculosis.
The horrified response to this artist’s experiment is misguided and potentially dangerous. As the food police begin to forcibly limit the use of salt in food processing, our foods are becoming more and more susceptible to bacteria. As people become more and more resistant to antibiotics used in treating the aforementioned diseases, preventing infection will become an essential step to saving lives.
Those believing that food preserved too well is a horrible thing ought to think back to a time when winter food options were limited and disease was far more prevalent.
Preservation of food is the preservation of life.
Image via Sally Davies Flickr stream
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OJgLJZuwM 285 234]
Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome guests Marc Scribner, William Yeatman, Lee Doren and Angela Logomasini to Episode 94 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We tackle politics in the Aloha state, freedom of information at the University of Virginia, Bureaucrash’s best and brightest and the attack of the nanny state.
Some 80 years ago this month, Mahatma Gandhi led tens of thousands on a 240-mile march in protest against a British salt tax, inciting millions to engage in widespread acts of civil disobedience. In a seemingly unintentional display of historic irony, the Food and Drug Administration made national headlines on April 20th for its efforts to forcibly restrict the amount of salt that can be added to processed foods. The Washington Post was among the first to pick up the story, and was subsequently chastised for its efforts in a statement from the FDA, released later that day. The FDA accused the Washington Post story of “[leaving] a mistaken impression” in the minds of readers. But examination of the facts shows that The Washington Post got it right, and that it is the FDA statement itself which leaves the mistaken impression.
The event that triggered media interest was the release of a report by the Institute of Medicine urging the FDA to revoke salt’s GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) classification, thereby granting regulators the legal framework needed to mandate acceptable levels of salt for processed foods.
The Washington Post responded to the release by reporting that the FDA’s plans to clamp down on salt were already underway and that the initiative would be launched later this year, citing FDA insiders who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. Within hours, the FDA responded with a statement that the Washington Post article leads readers to believe that the FDA “has begun the process of regulating the amount of sodium in foods.” The statement went on to assert that “[t]he FDA is not currently working on regulations… to regulate sodium content in foods at this time.”
While it is true that the FDA has made no official announcements regarding their stance on salt regulation, the claims that they have not begun the process and are not currently working on it are demonstrably false.
For 30 years, the FDA had largely ignored calls to reclassify salt, voiced by groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest. That all changed in October of 2007 when, in an abrupt about-face, the FDA announced in the Federal Register that they would hold a public hearing to consider a change in the regulatory status of salt. The hearing was conducted that November, and the public comment period was closed in August of 2008. Just a few weeks later, the IOM kicked off a 21 month project titled “Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake”—a project sponsored by the FDA. This project would ultimately lead to the creation of the recent IOM report, also FDA sponsored.
Over the course of 2009, 14 meetings and phone conferences were held discussing the project. All but the first two of these meetings were entirely closed to the public.
At the first meeting, a representative of the FDA itself made a presentation explicitly discussing the regulatory status of salt, as well as its history as a GRAS substance. The second meeting included a presentation addressing the legality of a reclassification of salt—concluding that the FDA has “ample legal authority” to do so—and one discussing how low salt reduction levels could be set.
But what of the science underwriting this new FDA push? Also included in the first meeting was a presentation by the Department of Health and Human Services stating that “100% of adults exceed the [adequate intake] of 1,500 mg sodium/day”. Presented with such a statistic, certain questions spring to mind. For instance, if 100% of adults eat more than 1,500mg of salt, what research could possibly have been conducted that would lead them to conclude that 1,500mg is adequate? One might assume that such research was conducted on residents of other countries, but the reality is that the average American consumes about 9% less salt than the worldwide average.
The only places in the world where you might find a significant population who eat so little salt are in countries so poor that people don’t have reliable access to food at all. In such a place, one might indeed find low rates of hypertension-related illness, but only because those who live under such tragic circumstances don’t enjoy the luxury of living to the age where high blood pressure starts to become a concern.
Decades of research, encompassing multiple lines of evidence, have shown that our bodies naturally self-regulate salt intake. Not unlike the feeling of thirst we experience when we need more water, our bodies send us queues—though more subtle than thirst—that lead us to unconsciously adjust our diets to meet our salt requirements. One recent study by nutritionists at the University of California at Davis examined data collected from over 19,000 individuals across 33 countries to find that the normal range of salt consumption is 2,700-4,900mg per day. The study went on to conclude that, because of our natural ability to regulate salt intake, it is “unlikely to be malleable by public policy initiatives, no matter how well intended.”
A study conducted 12 years earlier coincides with these findings, concluding that most people are simply unable to reduce their consumption below about 2,700mg per day, even when receiving regular dietary counseling and instruction. A third study, conducted the same year, demonstrates that people will unconsciously increase or decrease their dietary salt intake to stay within the normal range, even when they don’t know how much salt is in their food. Neuroscientists have even successfully identified the specific neurological mechanism by which this unconscious salt-regulation occurs.
Grossly out of step with the current scientific understanding, the FDA clearly has begun the process of regulating the amount of sodium in foods, and has been working on it for several years. Between the hearing in 2007, their sponsorship of—and participation in—the 21 month project specifically aimed at reclassifying salt, and their sponsorship of the report itself, there is little more that the FDA could have done to expedite the process.
It is true that the FDA has not yet formally proposed a rule, but that is the obvious next step on the new path it’s been taking for the past few years.
It is an outrage that the FDA would deign to censure The Washington Post for publishing an article informing readers about the shape of things to come. Far from leaving a “mistaken impression”, The Washington Post’s article hit the nail squarely on the head. If a mistaken impression is to be had, then readers need look no further than the FDA’s own statement. And why would the FDA go to such lengths to deny that which is both obvious and confirmed by insiders? It’s a safe bet that they want the unveiling of their plans to be timed just right, as whatever they are about to drop on us is bound to be damned unpalatable.
Having eliminated all crime from New York’s streets, ended homelessness, rebuilt Ground Zero, and fixed the state’s ailing public schools, New York’s state legislature has set its sights on how much salt you eat.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg already has a plan to reduce NYC residents’ salt intake by 25 percent over five years. But State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) thinks that doesn’t go nearly far enough. And it only covers New York City, for starters. The rest of the state’s salt intake would remain perilously unregulated under the Bloomberg plan.
That’s why Mr. Ortiz has introduced statewide legislation that would “make it illegal for restaurants to use salt in the preparation of food. Period.”
A $1,000 fine would accompany each violation.
Tom Colicchio, who owns a restaurant and has appeared on the television show Top Chef, is livid. He told the New York Daily News that “New York City is considered the restaurant capital of the world. If they banned salt, nobody would come here anymore… Anybody who wants to taste food with no salt, go to a hospital and taste that.”
He’s right; the salt ban does offend culinary decency. But there’s another angle that’s at least as important: personal responsibility.
If I want to pile on the salt, as Mayor Bloomberg famously does, that’s my right. But I also need to be liable for the consequences. If chronic salt over-consumption gives me high blood pressure and heart trouble, that’s my fault. I should pay the cost.
But that’s not how the current health care system works. We suffer from the 12-cent problem: on average, people only pay 12 cents for every dollar of health care they consume. Roughly 50 cents are picked up by the government, and insurers cover the rest.
That means people have less incentive to watch what they eat than under a more honest system. Why not rack up huge health care bills? Everyone else is paying for me. Health care on sale! 88 percent off!
Freedom cannot exist without responsibility. Decades of government encroachments in health care have taken away a lot of our responsibility for health care decisions. So it makes some sense that Mr. Ortiz would finish the job by taking away peoples’ freedom to eat what they want.
A better solution would be to have both freedom and responsibility, instead of neither. Ban the salt ban. Give people more control over their health care dollars. Let us be free. Let us be responsible. We’re all adults here. Treat us as such, Mr. Ortiz.
Here is my op-ed published in the New York Post on January 13th.
As-salt on science
On Monday, city officials rolled out an initiative to curb the salt content in manufactured and packaged foods. But the idea behind it — that salt intake has reached extreme levels in America — is a myth, and this “solution” wouldn’t work, anyway.
City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley aims to lead a national campaign to reduce the amount of salt in manufactured foods by 25 percent over the next five years. Cutting salt intake is supposed to reduce hypertension-related health problems. But while doctors may advise particular patients to cut down on salt, the science tells us that this is not a public-health problem.
Nutritionists at the University of California/Davis just published the first and only study to address salt intake and public policy. They found that people are naturally inclined to regulate salt intake to physiologically determined levels by unconsciously selecting foods to meet their needs — and even the most extreme interventions don’t do much.
The UC Davis study (published in the October issue of The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology) looked at data from more than 19,000 individuals from 33 countries worldwide. It determined that daily sodium intake ranges only from 2,700 milligrams to 4,900 mg, with the worldwide average of 3,700 mg.
It also determined that the average American consumes about 3,400 mg a day — disproving the claim spread by advocates such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest that US salt consumption is out of control.
In other words, Farley’s trying to fight a problem that doesn’t exist. Worse, his new guidelines say that daily sodium intake for most people shouldn’t exceed 1,500 mg — which is a ridiculous 45 percent below the bottom of the normal consumption range the UC Davis study identified, and a full 60 percent lower than the worldwide average.
The researchers also cite decades of research describing the specific mechanism by which the central nervous system, acting together with several organ systems, controls our appetite for salt. One of the studies they cite involved hundreds of participants in what was to be a three-year sodium-intake intervention, with the goal of reducing daily intake to 1,850 mg.
But after six months, researchers noted that participants were simply unable to cut sodium intake below about 2,750 mg a day — close to the bottom of the range the UC Davis study identified.
Another study had used intensive dietary counseling to get participants to cut daily sodium intake to an average of 1,775 mg over four weeks. After that, the subjects, while still receiving counseling, were randomly split into two groups — one getting a sodium tablet, the other a placebo.
Those who got the placebo still raised their intake by nearly 1,000 mg, while those on the sodium tablet actually cut their dietary-sodium consumption to compensate.
These people didn’t know how much sodium they were getting — they unconsciously changed their diets to match what their bodies “knew” they needed.
The UC Davis study also cites surveys showing that sodium intake in the United Kingdom has “varied minimally” over the last 25 years, despite a major government campaign to reduce it.
Overall, the researchers found, salt intake “is unlikely to be malleable by public policy initiatives,” and attempts to change it would “expend valuable national and personal resources against unachievable goals.”
The New York guidelines are voluntary — for now. But the city’s ban on trans fats started that way, too. And the federal Food and Drug Administration has also been looking to get in on the action — it may classify it as a “food additive,” subject to regulation, sometime this year.
But this campaign isn’t about public health — it’s about grandstanding on a pseudo-issue ginned up by activists, when science clearly shows that there’s neither a crisis nor a way for the government to actually alter our salt intake.
All these initiatives do is win headlines for ambitious policymakers (New York’s last health commissioner parlayed his trans-fat activism into a promotion to FDA chief), while making food slightly more costly and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of consumers — literally.
Daniel Compton is a research associate at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and contributor to OpenMarket.org
New York City is seeking to regulate how much salt is in peoples’ food.
Enforcement will prove difficult; most food that New Yorkers eat comes from outside the city’s jurisdiction. But the goal is to cut average salt intake by 25 percent.
Mayor Bloomberg can probably put a sizable dent in the city’s per capita salt intake all by himself. According to The New York Times, “He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot.”
The mayor also “likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips.”
There is a lesson to be learned here. People like salt. That’s why they eat so much of it. Suppose some of that salt is cut out of pre-packaged or processed foods. Anyone who wants to can just dump some on from a salt shaker to make up for it. This regulation is completely unenforceable.
There is also something to be said for practicing what one preaches.
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