Those of you with long memories may recall that my very first article, on this site, was about Nanny's campaign against salt. Dear old Nanny employed the dubious talents of a "bit part actor", called Sid the Slug, to warn us of the dangers of eating too much salt.
Ah, halcyon days!
I have to confess that I found that campaign to be rather hypocritical; given the fact that Nanny happily feeds school children processed muck, that is loaded to the gunnels with salt and other crap.
Ho hum, Nanny never does think things through.
Anyhoo, it seems that Nanny's clamp-down on salt is, as we all knew, utter bollocks.
This week US specialists have described the anti salt campaign as unscientific and ineffective.
Dick Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute, at a conference in London said:
"If salt reduction was a pill and not a policy it wouldn't pass muster our (U.S.) regulatory authorities, and it shouldn't be promoted by your Government..".
He said that efforts to show that cutting salt consumption actually reduced deaths had proved inconclusive. Out of twelve studies; only one had identified a health benefit, three had found potential risks and eight had found that reducing salt made essentially no difference.
David McCarron, a visiting professor at the University of California at Davis, said that evidence was accumulating that the real cause of high blood pressure was the quality of the diet, not whether it contained salt.
Britain's policy is stuck in the past, he said, there's news!
He cited evidence that moving to a diet richer in fruit, vegetables and dairy products had a far greater effect on blood pressure than reducing salt.
Exactly, as usual with Nanny's food fads it is utter codswallop (there's a word I haven't used for a while!) to blame one single food for the Nation's ills.
I would like to remind Nanny that if she were really serious about her anti salt campaign, she would stop feeding British school children the poisonous processed muck dished out in school canteens across the country.
Note the daily allowance for a child's school meal in Britain is 37p.
However, as we all know, improving the diet of school children would cost money; something that Nanny is only prepared to spend on the children of her chums in the European Commission (see yesterday's article).
Thanks for your post. I am the president of the Salt Institute referenced in your post. You quoted me from an article in The Times (London) about the presentation I made to the Royal Society of Chemistry symposium. The article was very good, but the quote was a bit mangled. May I correct it, please. The original which you quoted accurately said: "If salt reduction was a pill and not a policy it wouldn't pass muster without regulatory authorities, and it shouldn't be promoted by your Government..".
ReplyDeleteWhat I actually said was: "If salt reduction was a pill and not a policy it wouldn't pass muster with our (U.S.) regulatory authorities, and it shouldn't be promoted by your Government..".
My rationale can be found at http://www.saltinstitute.org/28.html.
Notable absence of scientific evidence-based argument in the article, though I suppose what it's saying is that if I fill myself with fruit rather than salty food that's better than trying to get the salt taken out of the salty food so I can carry on eating it. Too right! But I'm wondering whether anyone heas ever heard of a device called a salt cellar, that lets you add salt to food, to taste. the man from the salt institute should stick to promoting salt cellars and stop being a party to damaging people's health by promoting the addition salt in advance as a "convenience". I've checked, incidentally, when I eat less salt my blood pressure goes down, just like my doctor told me it would.
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