Food Police join dead-enders on salt: “It would be a shame if this [expert] report convinced people that salt doesn’t matter”

What can one expect? The Center for Science in the Public Interest has been attacking dietary salt since its inception in the 1970s.

In the wake of the new Institute of Medicine report debunking the need for drastic dietary salt reduction, the NYTimes reported:

But Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that has taken a strong position against excessive salt consumption, worried that the public would get the wrong message.

“It would be a shame if this report convinced people that salt doesn’t matter,” Ms. Liebman said.

From “False Alarm: A Report on the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1971-2006“:

Scare 9 – Salt. In 1981, CSPI petitioned the FDA for controls on the use of salt in processed foods, citing a 1979 FDA advisory committee that concluded that salt is not safe and should be restricted. In 2005, CSPI again sued to force the FDA to regulate salt. “There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with a straight face that salt is ‘generally recognized as safe,’” said CSPI’s Jacobson. Later in 2005, CSPI again attacked salt alleging that some food makers “recklessly” load up their products with more salt than their competitors. “Excess sodium in the diet causes tens of thousands of preventable heart attacks and strokes each year. This salt assault is probably good for funeral directors and coffin makers, but it is a disaster for shoppers and restaurant patrons,” said CSPI’s Jacobson. CSPI urged Congress to create a new division of Sodium Reduction within the FDA that could encourage – through the bully pulpit and regulation – food companies to use less salt,” CSPI stated in its media release. In a February 2005 report, entitled “Salt the Forgotten Killer and the FDA’s Failure to Protect the Public Health,” CSPI claimed that salt kills 150,000 people per year.