Summary: Reduced Salt Diet

Caitlin Barnes
Section 001-11:20

NRT: Response paper 2

Part 1:
In favor of: • Strengths- There is enough conclusive evidence that a reduced salt diet will help decrease future health risks. This shows that over time people that they studied that had a diet that contained less salt showed a decrease risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The fact that they have a few large companies on their side somewhat trying to reduce the amount of salt in their food works well to try and get others to follow. This shows that the companies that will probably not lose as much money will show others the right and wrong ways to go about the change and then others can follow with less detriment to their own company. • Weaknesses- Not regulating
the amount of salt within the food right away seems like a major oversight. They don’t seem to want to change much of anything except just telling them what to do and hoping that after they say they don’t want to that they actually will. Putting it all on the Obama administration after all these years of not regulating seems like they are looking for just another excuse to not make major changes. It should be the FDA and USDA’s priority to go out and get this regulated without falling back on others support. I’m sure it would be nice but more strict regulations would start to make companies comply just as well as having the President say I want this to change.
Against:
• Strengths- The consumer is mostly shown all the labeling of what is in their food when they buy it.
This allows the consumer to know what they are buying; if they know what they are looking at. • Weaknesses- “The problem of overconsumption derives more from personal choice than from sodium intake under circumstances beyond one's control, such as when large amounts of sodium were added to food products without information to consumers.” This whole sentence seems to contradict his argument. That people need to regulate themselves when it comes to health and consumption of salt but then goes to say that the food industry added tons of salt without of knowing. So we are just suppose to know all of a sudden that this occurred, change our lifestyles to fit the food industry, and not eat the food that they are encouraging and pushing us to eat everyday. Also telling us the nutritional facts about salt does not help due to the fact that this is an overconsumption problem. They are not letting us know the benefits so that we will eat more. We know that we are getting enough and way more of those nutrients in salt that we need and have gone to the point of needing, in some cases, half of what we actually
get.

Part 2: The food industry does not want to have to replace salt they use because of increased price and the potential loss of customers.
The “healthy” food is said to not sell without salt being added. They think that people like salt much and that if it is not included in the food people will not want to but the food. Overall the food industry cares about losing money by reducing the amount of salt in foods. Also salt helps to preserve the food that they are
selling.

Part 3: similarities and differences.

One of the main similarities is that they both have major health problems for the consumer if nothing is changed. Also the food industry which is going to have to pay more money or risk losing money does not want anything to change. This is the same thing as putting nutritional information on menus because they are looking out for themselves over the health of their customers. They do not want to harm their wallets so they continue to put people at risk for health problems. Again the argument that the individual should know how to regulate its own diet is shown. This is true that people can regulate their own diet but it should not be a struggle to be able to do so and to find the foods that do have lower sodium. And all people have the right to healthier food not just the people that want to and know the health problems associated with salt. When it comes to restaurants adding nutritional information you could argue that if you didn’t eat out then this would regulate itself. In this case saying this is talking about everyday food that we get at the grocery store too. And they have added sodium more and more knowing the risks. This makes it increasingly harder for the consumer to be pushed to actually make a change on their own. One difference is that this is a single ingredient. So it is much easier to remove this from foods that for restaurants to add nutritional information. Though it would change the way some foods are made and taste this is the point of trying to get people away from the idea that the best tasting food is what I should eat. Though we do want great tasting foods there are many other alternatives to salt that can be explored and overall will make food healthier to consume.