Headlines & features

America's long and dangerous love affair with salty food may be coming to an end.

After more than 40 years of failed efforts to reduce salt in processed and restaurant food voluntarily, a new report calls on the Food and Drug Administration to establish mandatory standards that gradually reduce sodium content in the nation's food supply. Read more...

The Online Times reports : "Salt from Wales used to make President Obama's favourite caramel has helped to boost British food export for the fifth consecutive year. Click the link above to read the entire story.

Botched snowfighting is more than inconvenient. In addition to threatening public safety, failing to handle winter storms exacts a severe penalty in worker wages, retail sales and government tax revenues according to American City & County magazine.

The NY City Health Department is helping destroy the city financially reports the Manhattan Conservative Examiner .

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pushing food producers and restaurants to cut the salt in their products by 25 percent. The head of the federal Centers for Disease Control warns that if they refuse, this voluntary approach may become compulsory. Read more at the Chicago Tribune

CNN reported: The blizzards that battered the Northeast and mid-Atlantic in February likely cost states hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new report from the American Highway Users Alliance. Read more .....

"A deeply misguided measure" introduced into the NY Assembly, would ban salt in the preparation of restaurant meals in New York State, the Albany, NYTimes-Union reports. The bill sponsor admitted to the reporter, Steve Barnes,

that he did not research salt's role in food chemistry or his bill's ramifications for the restaurant industry. He said he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.

Ortiz also said he expects to continue to eat ham, cheese and bread in restaurants, all of which contain salt.

The U.S. State Department's Voice of America captures the essence of the argument on salt reduction: what would be the health outcome?

Senior editor Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason magazine reports on the John Tierney piece in the NY Times , emphasizing Tierney's "interesting and little-heard argument that mandating less salt might mean fatter Americans."

Is there evidence that efforts to reduce population salt intake can overrule the natural salt appetite? NY Times science editor John Tierney reviews the evidence and finds conflicting study results. As a result, when revised federal dietary guidelines are issued later this year, there is really no reliable way to predict their effect. One outcome, Tierney's prediction, is "the further fattening of America."