Salt Shake City

More meddling and food moralism from the tiresome Bloomberg administration:

First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt. On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products. The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Of course there's a solid scientific basis for the plan, and all the pros and cos have been carefully charted and weighed.

Just kidding.

Some medical researchers have questioned the scientific basis for the initiative, saying insufficient research had been done on possible effects. While agreeing that reducing salt is likely to lower average blood pressure, they say it can lead to other physiological changes, some of which may be associated with heart problems. An elaborate clinical trial could weigh the pluses and minuses of cutting salt in a large group of people. But that would cost millions, and it has not been done.

Dr. Michael H. Alderman, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the city's initiative, if successful in reducing salt, would amount to an uncontrolled experiment with the public's health.

Comments

[Johan]

I don't mind that the amount of salt in packaged or restaurant food is reduced. You can always add salt when it is on the plate. Make sure you have some salt with you, as your favourite restaurant may have removed the salt shakers from the tables.

[Aaron Kinney]

Why do I get the feeling that Lord Bloomberg's diet will not see any reduction in sodium content even when this new rule is enacted?

[benpal]

Why do some people want to live the life of others instead of getting a life of their own?

[GreginOz]

And another thing...is it true that in some U.S. states, one can not buy a 'blue' or 'rare' steak at restaurants? The theory being that if the meat is not 'medium' cooked at least that bacilli will still threaten the health of the eater? I also heard that some places won't serve you a really hot coffee, because we r fukn stoopid? Tell me it ain't so, Horatio!

[Dale Boley]

If the government is paying for your health care they can also dictate your diet. But why stop there? Every moment asleep or awake, throughout ones whole life, impacts their physical and/or mental health.
Let us deem that we all shall live a bland gray life, eating bland gray food... Devoid of flavor and free from risk. Amen.

[EscapedWestOfTheBigMuddy]

GreginOZ,
It is occasionally (often in cheaper places) difficult or impossible to get unburnt hamburgers or other ground meat products (and don't even think about ordering steak tartar!).

I don't believe I've encountered a restaurant that wouldn't sell me a medium rare steak (well, except through bungling incompetence in the kitchen, but that is another story).

[Hands off my food!]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Health Czar Thomas Farley have declared war on sugar, cigarettes, trans-fats, calorie counts . . . and now salt.

The Bloomberg administration is pursuing a sweeping sodium reduction campaign that makes NYC residents test subjects and pressures food companies to drastically change their products regardless of the desires of consumers. Worse yet, this bureaucratic agenda is not based on sound science, but on political science and alarmism.

Sign the petition today and save NYC's incredible and diverse cuisine and protect your right to make your own food choices.

My food. My choice.

[the friendly grizzly]

Frito-Lay test-marketed a reduced-salt line of chips in, among other places, Nashville TN. THEY WERE GREAT!!! They reminded me of how the Lays products in Thailand were seasoned. You could actually taste the potato flavor of a potato chip, even in the spiced ones like bar-b-cue. Seriously, they were good, and not bland like some health-food-store rubbish.

I guess the test market failed, as they are gone. While I would like to see them bring the products back, I specifically do NOT want it back because Nurse Bloomberg demands it.