Still shaking salt on your snacks and dinners? Well maybe you should think twice. Health and consumer supporters have seen an increasing eruption of high blood pressure and similar diseases, so they are nudging food makers to make some changes.
The majority of Americans take in more than twice the daily recommended level of sodium, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is impossible to get rid of all salt in the American diet, but if efforts for decreasing salt are victorious, advocates say there would be less hypertension, heart disease and strokes. Heart disease and strokes are the No. 1 and No. 3 killers across the nation.
Many dietary elements affect blood pressure, but salt is the most dominant, says Lawrence J. Appel, who is a professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. He is also a member of the salt panel at the Institute of Medicine, which is a scientific advisory panel. Appel said salt is the reason we have a blood pressure epidemic. He adds, “No one knows how much salt he consumes or has easy control of it; it’s why the solution is a public health one.”
He said one thing we can do is to not shake salt on our food. The problem though, is that most salt is added during processing or in preparation at restaurants. To change, restaurants would have to throw out recipes they have counted on for years, and then there’s the concern for consumer dissatisfaction with the changes.
A consumer group, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, that sued in 2005 to eliminate salt from the Food and Drug Administration’s safe food list, says restaurants and process foods are responsible for more than three-fourths of the salt that people eat.
Michael F. Jacobson, the Center Executive Director, said that regulation is a must, because, unlike fattening foods, the results of consuming too much salt are not as obvious.
Action is being taken by the Grocery Manufacturing Association for decreasing salt in our foods. It will be a slow process because Americans are so used to the taste of salt. Salt is also used in production and preservation.
The good news is that lower-sodium options are increasing, slowly but surely.
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