Legislating Your Salt Intake

[Hoss]

Don't ya just love how the pickle sniffer, as a smoker, tells us how we should be more healthy?

Isn't it funny how in that whole article, they don't mention the President, Tony?

The ODS runs rampant with you.  The only people mentioned are the legislators who introduced it.

Not like it's surprising, or like you'll respond to me.

[we vs us]

I understand government dictated health criteria are good for the great ignorant masses, but fear of direct regulation on this scale has no end. 

Fixed that for you. 

This thread is just chock full of the slippery slope.  It's as if there's no difference between keeping a healthy level of an everyday substance in your most common products -- as guided by science -- and the minute control of every little choice you make.  This is definitively the first and not the second. And there's simply no comparing the two.  These are not goons or death squads or brownshirts or local militia knocking down your door to force you to think right.  These are also not portly, taser-happy cops writing you citation after citation for not complying with their obscure moralisms.  These are simple questions of health which, if we're clear-eyed, we can see have nothing but upside, and a downside that amounts to you not wanting new stuff in your old Wheaties. 

And re: "individual responsibility" . . . why must every half-step I take be an exercise in personal morality?  You guys are essentially insisting that a choice should exist where maybe there doesn't need to be one.  Why, if the answer to the choice is both obvious and not earth-shattering, why does a choice still need to exist?  I have a whole host of new options and opportunities to exercise my personal liberty in the 21st century; why can't we take some of the old and unexciting ones out of the portfolio? 

[guido911]

Looks like the FDA is interested in regulating salt (unofficially of course).

http://eatdrinkandbe.org/article/index.0420_law_salt1

Let's see, the FDA. Isn't that an agency underneath the authority of the Dept. of HHS?

[we vs us]

Don't ya just love how the pickle sniffer, as a smoker, tells us how we should be more healthy?

W T F is a pickle sniffer?

[JeffM]

Dunno.  Some Tea Partier told me Lindsay Graham was one....

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pickle%20sniffer

[Conan71]

W T F is a pickle sniffer?

I think it's like snorkeling.

[custosnox]

What shoudl be taken into concideration on this, beyond the nanny state implications, is the reasons that so much salt is used in these foods.  There are plenty of people out there that would like to imagine a corporate meeting where the maniacle heads get together to figure out a way to screw over the public some how or another, but this is not how it works.  It's more like the heads get together to figure out a way to make a profit, even if it means screwing over the people.  So we must ask how pouring salt into foods makes them more profitable.  The obvious is because it makes it taste better.  There is also that it is used as a perservative.  So if we restrict how much salt they can put in the food, then reason stands that the food companies will replace it with something else to increase the taste or preserve it.  The question that now becomes the focus is what will the food companies be pouring into the foods to help their bottom line and what effect that will have on the general health of the community.

I do wonder, however, if this would stand up to the scrutiny of the Supreme Court if it is ever challanged.  I'm curious as to which clause in the constitution congress points to in order to constitute them writing legislation to control the food industry in this way.

[nathanm]

I'm curious as to which clause in the constitution congress points to in order to constitute them writing legislation to control the food industry in this way.

That would be the regulation of interstate commerce, the same thing that lets them regulate meat packing plants and require nutritional labels.

And most likely, the food companies will replace some of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride, which has fewer detrimental effects, so long as you don't eat way too much of it. (sort of like sodium chloride, actually)

[custosnox]

That would be the regulation of interstate commerce, the same thing that lets them regulate meat packing plants and require nutritional labels.

let me rephrase, I wonder how they will twist it to say that it gives them the power.  Commerce != Individual Health (I know, this is about what the companies put in the food and not individuals, but it still boils down to Congress saying that we don't care enough about ourselves to monitor what we buy for better health, so they are going to remove the choices from us)

[Breadburner]

That would be the regulation of interstate commerce, the same thing that lets them regulate meat packing plants and require nutritional labels.

And most likely, the food companies will replace some of the sodium chloride with potassium chloride, which has fewer detrimental effects, so long as you don't eat way too much of it. (sort of like sodium chloride, actually)

Yeah...They will if they want the food to taste like fertilizer.....

[nathanm]

Yeah...They will if they want the food to taste like fertilizer.....

I've had occasion to use potassium chloride salt instead of the standard table salt. I couldn't tell much of a difference. Maybe it would be different if there were a couple of grams of it in my meal.

[Conan71]

I've had occasion to use potassium chloride salt instead of the standard table salt. I couldn't tell much of a difference. Maybe it would be different if there were a couple of grams of it in my meal.

Try about 100 mEq and see how that works...

[nathanm]

Try about 100 mEq and see how that works...

Potassium chloride is no more toxic than sodium chloride. Both will kill you if you eat too much, and you will die without enough salt, whether potassium or sodium. I think the LD50 of eaten KCl is on the order of ounces for an adult human.