The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
More than 200 Chinese takeout restaurants in the city’s poorest neighborhoods – most with kitchens behind bulletproof glass – are participating in a program to reduce the salt in their cooking, according the City Department of Public Health. In an effort to lower high blood pressure, and, in turn, the number of heart attacks and strokes, the health department is partnering with Temple University’s Center for Asian Health, the Asian Community Health Coalition, and the Greater Philadelphia Chinese Restaurant Association to encourage some of the city’s 400 Chinese takeout restaurants to use less salt. The program is financed through a five-year grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A five year grant? Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis on this?
If the restaurants are being paid to reduce salt – which goes against the whole basis of Chinese cooking – my guess is that they will either not reduce it, or pop a little pack of salty soy sauce in each meal to make it more palatable.
What nonsense.
Reality check in aisle one please! The article says that they eat Chinese several times a week. This begs the obvious question of how “poor” these people really are. My wife and kids do not eat Chinese several times a week,even though I can afford it. The answer is to teach people to cook healthier foods on a fixed income or budget,and avoid wasting money.I realise ,however, that this is probably utopian thinking that will never see the light of day.This would solve their high sodium intake easily,but not without the pain of “effort”.
“More than 200 Chinese takeout restaurants in the city’s poorest neighborhoods – most with kitchens behind bulletproof glass –…”
I am surprised that some social scientist or politician hasn’t claimed that the Chinese are deliberately using salt to kill off ghetto dwellers. And that it is unfair for them to use bullet-proof glass. After all, the only reason anyone would shoot them is because they are so insensitive as to use salt in the food they sell.