8 thoughts on “Salt and the assault of opinion on evidence”
I’m struggling to udnerstand why the food industry would be against reducing salt? Salt costs money, and so adding less would make food slightly cheaper?
This is utterly different from Big Tobacco who had one product that we didn’t need . Food manufacturers make something essential, and we will eat broadly the same amount no matter what – or at least spend roughly the same on food.
So what exactly is the finanical motivation for Big Food to reject salt as a problem?
Those claiming that Big Food is funding bad science are making a ludicrous claim.
You can have my salt shaker when you take it from my cold, dead hands. And my blood pressure’s just fine, thanks, unless I’m reading what the govt is up to.
It’s Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
“This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.”
Unless you have PROOF that the industry is faking data, their results are as valid as any one’s. When has science become a communist institution?
Twenty years ago a doctor told me that if you use too much salt, some people get an elevated blood pressure temporarily, some get an decreased blood pressure temporarily, and some have no effect at all. Since then, I haven’t read anything that proves him wrong.
While I do not understand the science, and I do realize that hypertension can be aggravated by salt, it seems that is where most research stops. So the FDA in 2015, for example, basically recommended reducing salt intake for everybody to what is probably safe for most of the hypertensive. In 2014, the CDC reported studies showing the then-current recommended level was OK (as in not so little as to cause health issues) – but in a subsection noted that people who ingested three times (or more) the recommended level showed “no adverse effects”.
Not having elevated blood pressure, I will continue to salt some of my food.
Get an annual blood test that monitors your electrolytes (Sodium, magnesium, potassium etc). If they are within the limits, ignore the hype. If they are not take the necessary steps to bring them into balance.
To be a zealot requires a sense of self-importance coupled with a generous supply of ignorance…….
Nebulous subjects like salt intake and climate are ideal for specialization by anyone seeking instant popular acclaim……
Common sense and balance is out the window on these salt arguments. Where the pro-salt arguments may be biased by money, the anti-salt arguments are biased by Munchausen by proxy syndrome (the passion to be seen as hero and willing to do anything to create that illusion). These anti-salt scares surface about every 10 years, are discredited and temporarily disappear. Then another digs them out of the landfill of history and waves them in our face again.
“The educated man and the scientist are as prone as any other to become the victim of their own prejudices. He will in defense thereof make shipwreck of both facts and methods of science, by perpetrating every form of fallacy, inaccuracy and distortion.” Karl Pearson
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I’m struggling to udnerstand why the food industry would be against reducing salt? Salt costs money, and so adding less would make food slightly cheaper?
This is utterly different from Big Tobacco who had one product that we didn’t need . Food manufacturers make something essential, and we will eat broadly the same amount no matter what – or at least spend roughly the same on food.
So what exactly is the finanical motivation for Big Food to reject salt as a problem?
Those claiming that Big Food is funding bad science are making a ludicrous claim.
You can have my salt shaker when you take it from my cold, dead hands. And my blood pressure’s just fine, thanks, unless I’m reading what the govt is up to.
It’s Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
“This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/
Unless you have PROOF that the industry is faking data, their results are as valid as any one’s. When has science become a communist institution?
Twenty years ago a doctor told me that if you use too much salt, some people get an elevated blood pressure temporarily, some get an decreased blood pressure temporarily, and some have no effect at all. Since then, I haven’t read anything that proves him wrong.
While I do not understand the science, and I do realize that hypertension can be aggravated by salt, it seems that is where most research stops. So the FDA in 2015, for example, basically recommended reducing salt intake for everybody to what is probably safe for most of the hypertensive. In 2014, the CDC reported studies showing the then-current recommended level was OK (as in not so little as to cause health issues) – but in a subsection noted that people who ingested three times (or more) the recommended level showed “no adverse effects”.
Not having elevated blood pressure, I will continue to salt some of my food.
Get an annual blood test that monitors your electrolytes (Sodium, magnesium, potassium etc). If they are within the limits, ignore the hype. If they are not take the necessary steps to bring them into balance.
To be a zealot requires a sense of self-importance coupled with a generous supply of ignorance…….
Nebulous subjects like salt intake and climate are ideal for specialization by anyone seeking instant popular acclaim……
Common sense and balance is out the window on these salt arguments. Where the pro-salt arguments may be biased by money, the anti-salt arguments are biased by Munchausen by proxy syndrome (the passion to be seen as hero and willing to do anything to create that illusion). These anti-salt scares surface about every 10 years, are discredited and temporarily disappear. Then another digs them out of the landfill of history and waves them in our face again.
“The educated man and the scientist are as prone as any other to become the victim of their own prejudices. He will in defense thereof make shipwreck of both facts and methods of science, by perpetrating every form of fallacy, inaccuracy and distortion.” Karl Pearson