We're heading out on a two+ week trip and, since I had back surgery 15 days ago, I can't carry much. So I'm leaving my laptop at home, bringing my Kindle to get the news (it also has eight books I could read) and will only take one paperback book. That one is by Marion Nestle, a named-chair nutrition professor at NYU, and is her take on how the food industry tries and largely succeeds in influencing nutrition and health, usually not for our benefit. More on that subject later.
In the meantime I found an article on a branch of the United Kingdom's health system, their National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (That leads to a great acronym: NICE), wants the U.K. government to help further restrict salt intake.
As I've noted before, most of the salt in the American diet, and apparently most in the U.K population's diet, comes from salt added to "prepared foods." So the NICE group wants the government to get the food industry, via new laws or taxes or restricting some TV ads, to stop pushing salt (and fat and sugar) at the consumers.
The average daily salt intake in the U.K is about 8.5 grams, which is the equivalent of 3.34 grams of sodium. The current recommendation there is 6 grams of sat or 2.36 grams of sodium. The goal espoused by NICE is to gradually lower the salt intake to 3 grams (1.18 grams of sodium) by 2025.
They think such diminution of sodium content of foods (and fat content also) could help prevent about 40,000 premature deaths from heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular disease. Of course the U.K. food industry, through a lobbying group, is protesting, saying NICE is out of touch with what's been happening for years and that the steps recommended are totally unnecessary.
NICE has come up with some great new concepts, including restricting permits for fast food outlets in some areas (presumably near schools), barring some food ads during hours when kids may be watching TV and a "traffic light" system for color codes on foots that would reveal their level of salt, fat and sugar.
If I have to say so myself these are very NICE ideas.
I did such a good job of cutting back on salt intake that I ended up slightly deficient in sodium. I actually had to add a little salt back to my diet. I bet that doesn't happen to very many folks.
If shoppers would just glance at the nutritional information on packaged and canned foods as well as many frozen items, they'd be shocked at the amount of sodium in these products.