Photo: "Table Salt" by awrose; Flickr

Tom Urell

After taking on trans fats and requiring calorie counts in restaurants, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is setting his sights on salt. This time, though, it’s not through regulation but with a campaign to encourage food companies and restaurants to reduce the sodium content of their products. And according to today’s Wall Street Journal, some companies have already started.

Because so many food companies operate nationally, Bloomberg is hoping to have other cities and states participate in the sodium reduction campaign, making this a larger-scale effort than any of his previous food or diet initiatives.  The argument goes like this: higher salt consumption leads to higher blood pressure and increases risk of stroke, and a reduction in salt in the most common forms–packaged foods and restaurant meals–will save lives.

But is he right?

Unlike posting calorie counts, which was an education and awareness campaign, and unlike the trans fat ban, which was based on solid science, the jury still seems to be out on the severity of salt-related health issues, partly because we already eat so much!

Marion Nestle, the prominent NYU nutritionist, explains that it is really difficult to tell what role salt plays in our health:

“It is one of the great oddities of nutrition that public health guidelines invariably recommend salt reduction but the science is so hard to do that the value of doing so can’t be proven unequivocally.  Hypertension specialists insist that salt reduction is essential for controlling high blood pressure, and many people with high blood pressure can demonstrate that this is true.

So why can’t the science show it?  I’d say because even the lowest salt intakes are higher than recommended.  Because everyone consumes higher-than-recommended amounts, it’s impossible to divide people into meaningful groups of salt eaters and see whether low-salt diets work.”

Check out more of Nestle’s writing about salt here on her blog, including her take on the NYC salt initiative.

Nestle’s take on the campaign is that it is ultimately a good thing, because we don’t have any choice in the amount of salt in the products we buy. Packaged foods and restaurant meals are already so far over the FDA’s recommended daily sodium allowance that the reduction can only benefit public health. The target, a 25% reduction over five years on only the most popular products, seems to be a small step to tackle a serious problem.

This all makes sense as a first step, but opens the door to another question about a much larger issue: How much can and should the government interfere in the production of food? Aside from major safety concerns, like contaminants in the food supply, should the government, at the local, state or national level, be involved in telling private companies what they can and cannot put into their products?

I’ll leave the latter, thorny issue for another day. For now, what is your take on the latest Bloomberg food crusade? How would you feel if the city of Boston or the state decided to regulate salt (or any other ingredient) in the foods you eat?