Confirming two earlier studies of the U.S. population in the federal government's Nutrition and Health Examination Survey (NHANES) parts I and II, a study by Drs. Hillel W. Cohen, Susan N. Hailpern and Michael H. Alderman in the new issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine examined the relationship of dietary sodium and mortality in NHANES III. The NHANES sample represented 99 million non-institutionalized U.S. adults aged 30 and over. Dividing the population into quartiles the researchers found an inverse relationship between sodium consumption and mortality. The lowest quartile (averaging 1,501 mg/day sodium - coincidentally, the sodium target for sodium restriction advocates - had an 87% greater cardiovascular mortality than the highest sodium quartile (which averaged a hefty 5,497 mg/day). In the NHANES I analysis, the low-salt group was 20% more likely to die. In the NHANES II group, the low-salt group was 37% more likely to die. So the trend with the recent studies has been accelerating in the opposite direction than that predicted by authors of the government's dietary guidelines.

The data seem to be giving the public health nutrition establishment a slap in the face trying to wake it up. The lowest quartile was a good surrogate for the politically-correct social elite. They were, by far, the best-educated, smoked less, consumed the least salt, added the least salt at the table and had the lowest body mass, but still had non- significantly higher systolic blood pressure and, of course, they suffered vastly higher mortality outcomes."

The authors conclude that "These data are consistent with the hypothesis that lower sodium intake is associated with increased CVD and all-cause mortality." Although many associations lacked statistical significance, they "were remarkably consistent." They added: "In contrast, no analysis of the two mortality outcomes generated (Note: CVD and all-cause)any trend supporting the competing hypothesis that the highest sodium relative to the lowest sodium is associated with increased mortality."

Bottom line: "There are no randomized trial data linking sodium intake to CVD events or mortality." In fact, the findings, they declare, affirm "that for the broad general US population, higher sodium is unlikely to be independently associated with higher all-cause or CVD mortality."

Nutritionists convened in Brussels last week in a conference organized by EuSalt, the association of European salt companies. As reported in FoodNavigator.com , a basic thrust of discussion was the inadequacy of current data sets on actual nutrient intake levels. The European Union has a program (FACET) to harmonize intake data collection and create EU-wide databases.

"We need to deliver meaningful data," said Beate Kettlitz, director of food policy, science and R&D at the CIAA, the European food and drink industry association, speaking at the event.

"There is a lot of information out there about what people are eating - national databases, regional databases, in-house databases owned by food companies - but quantity counts for little if the data is not also good quality," she said.

While cautioning that the quest of perfect data should not become an excuse to "do nothing" when consensus exists, Loek Pijls, of ILSI-Europe also pointed out the inherent complexities of the data:

"Eating is a complex thing - if you change one thing, you affect others," he said. "For example, we know that there is a link between the levels of vitamin D we consume and the ability to absorb calcium."

We agree, lowering dietary salt, for example, triggers hormone production and inhibits insulin resistance independent of any blood pressure effect. The totality of the impacts must be assessed together.

For all those who fear the impact of salt on growing crops here is interesting news. Researchers report that growing cherry tomatoes in salty water can make them tastier and richer in antioxidants. Seawater irrigation puts an environmental stress on the the tomato plants that causes them to produce more vitamin C, vitamin E, and dihydrolipoic and chlorogenic acids.in an attempt to cope with the stressful conditions.

It also improves the flavor of the tomatoes.

Riccardo Izzo, a professor of agriculture at the University of Pisaone describes the findings .

In an excellent attempt to provide a balanced view of the salt and health debate, Kevin Lomangino, editor of Clinical Nutrition Insight reviews several sides of the matter in the May 20, 2008 edition of the bulletin . He correctly states that a number of physicians feel strongly that the reduction of salt intake would provide significant benefit to the overall health of the population. However, he immediately follows on to say that there are other well-known physicians that dissent from this point of view.

But while the maneuverings on the political and media fronts would suggest that the science on salt settled, a thorough search of the literature shows that this is not yet the case.

Lomangino goes on to quote Doctor Alexander Logan, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, Ontario, who stated in an introduction to the 2006 Journal of the American College of Nutrition supplement about dietary salt:

Until better information is available, evidence supports a public-health dietary policy that focuses on improving diet quality in the entire population and recommends a different target intake levels for sodium based on individual susceptibility to salt.

The article describes that several influential medical practitioners would like to see a major study on the impact of sodium restriction on health outcomes while, on the other hand, some believe that it is unnecessary and expensive. Dr. Michael Alderman, professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of medicine and Past President of the American Society of Hypertension believes that proceeding to implement a salt reduction policy without such a study is very risky.

To experiment on 300 million people on issues that might cause harm... it's just not sound scientific policy.

The article went on to say that Dr. Alderman was very concerned that people have stopped looking at the paucity of evidence supporting salt reduction policy and that they are simply looking at the means of implementing one.

In the article, "Technological issues associated with iodine fortification of foods ," authors Winger, Konig and House describe some of the potential interactions of iodine compounds with foods. This article is of considerable interest because it goes into a range of possible problems associated with high-level iodine fortification - that is, the addition of iodine compounds directly to the finished foods.

Although the authors attempt to make it clear that the negative consequences of iodine fortification of foods would only occur at high levels of fortification and would never be the result of using iodized salt, they do not unequivocally state that, for all intents and purposes, whole formulated food products would never be iodized at levels that would impact the color, flavor or functionality of those foods.

If whole, formulated foods will never be iodized to those levels which can impact on the quality of the food, then the whole issue becomes moot and should not be confused with the use of iodized salt in food products.

Iodized salt can be used in formulating all food products without any fear of reducing quality.

Perhaps it would have been useful for the authors to have made that simple statement of fact.

With the US presidential campaign focusing so much on character (Obama's embrace of his racist preacher, Clinton's embellished "experience," McCain's unpredictable "maverick" tendencies), one can lose track of some very real issues that divide the candidates. These aren't limited to the economic issues, but that's today's focus. This week Congressional Democrats tied themselves squarely to the anti-free trade crowd with Speaker Pelosi refusing a vote on the Columbian free trade agreement (which Bill was for before Hillary was against). Hovering just under the radar is, aguably, the biggest divide: the Bush tax cuts. Democrats only accepted the cuts because they included in the package a provision that automatically restores the original tax rules and rates at the end of 2010 unless another law supersedes the one on the books. Democrats have loudly proclaimed the tax cuts as a Republican give-away of the federal treasury while Republicans crow that the cuts ended the recession that began in the last year of the Clinton presidency and is needed to sustain our economic growth.

The April 21 edition of National Review (subscription required) examines the historic tax take of the national governments of the US and its OECD partners. An excerpt illustrates, but please keep reading because I'd like to draw a parallel to an issue regarding salt. NR's Kevin Hassett wrote:

As reporters sort through these debates, they must write at a far lower level of sophistication than that of the studies in question. Since New York Times readers don't know econometrics, they are instead offered pseudo-analysis. The economists who agree with supply-side economics are generally described in terms to suggest that they are nut jobs. Those who disagree with supply-siders are "distinguished professors" or "senior fellows" at "nonpartisan" institutes. We are invited to judge, not the arguments, but the reasonableness of those who make them - and it is clear what our judgment is supposed to be. But interestingly enough, it's possible to determine with some precision whether a policy has been formulated by nut jobs. To see how, consider the following statement: "U.S. fiscal policy in recent years has deviated wildly from fiscal policy in other developed nations." If that's true, one can presumably make the case that U.S. policymakers have ignored policy norms. (This is of course just what one would expect nut jobs to do.) If the claim is false, however, then it's rather harder to claim that American fiscal policy is in the hands of kooks.

Let's apply that method to the question of income-tax cuts. The nearby chart depicts recent trends in the share of GDP that governments collect through income taxes. The purple line represents the U.S.; the blue line represents the average for large developed nations in the OECD, excluding the U.S. And the story is clear: For most of recent history, the U.S. share was about equal to that of the OECD generally. It did deviate wildly at one point - in the second term of President Clinton, when the U.S. was collecting a markedly higher percentage of its GDP in income-tax revenue than were its fellow OECD members. But the Bush tax cuts returned us to normalcy.

The "salt" issue? The policy debates over whether the entire population should be encouraged to reduce dietary salt often comes across as a debate with an empty chair. Proponents of this intervention are content to point to their accepted "expert" status and insist that their informed opinion should determine the policy question. These are the "distinguished professors" etc of Mr. Hassett's narrative. By no means all, but some of these activists have tried to marginalize the equally-distinguished experts who argue that no evidence shows low salt diets will improve public health. They duck the issue and try to dismiss opposing scientists as somehow less informed or, surely, more biased -- in short, akin to the "nut jobs" Mr. Hassett describes (though none of them have stooped that far to date).

The parallel? Mr. Hassett graphs the data. That's what we should be doing too: looking at the data. Those data can tell us a lot more than the "expert" opinion of those who cannot or won't deal with the real evidence. Let's stop talking with the empty chair. The public deserves better.

The April 10 issue of the Harvard Medical School 's HealthBeat offers "diet tips for lower blood pressure." We wish they'd wake up that the real issue isn't "blood pressure," but "improved health." Still, the glimmerings of awakening are discernible. Let me add boldface to the relevant parts of the complete text for the tip: "Consume less salt":

Doctors first noticed a link between hypertension and sodium chloride - the most common form of dietary salt - in the early 1900s, when they found restricting salt in patients with kidney failure and severe hypertension brought their blood pressures down and improved kidney function.

Federal guidelines advise people to limit sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day - about the amount in 1 teaspoon of table salt. Yet Americans typically consume 1 to 3 teaspoons, or as much as 7,200 mg a day. This fact, coupled with the high prevalence of hypertension in the United States, led researchers to assume that salt overload was the culprit.

As it turns out, this may or may not be true. Nearly 50% of people who have hypertension are salt-sensitive, meaning eating too much sodium clearly elevates their blood pressure and puts them at risk for complications. In addition, people with diabetes, the obese, and older people seem more sensitive to the effects of salt than the general population. However, the question of whether high salt consumption also puts generally healthy people at risk for hypertension is the source of considerable debate. Regardless of whether high salt intake increases blood pressure, it does interfere with the blood pressure-lowering effects of antihypertensive medications.

Baby steps forward.

Newspapers today reported on work being carried out at Glasgow University on the relationship of aldosterone to blood pressure . The research was presented at the annual Society for Endocrinology BES meeting in Harrogate , UK. The initial research indicates that in older people, higher levels of aldosterone in the bloodstream are associated with high blood pressure .

In a paper entitled, "Aldosterone and cardiovascular function: a lifetime of damage ," Dr. John Connell , who is Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Glasgow and Head of the of the Medical Research Council's Blood Pressure Group, based in the British Heart Foundation's Cardiovascular Research Centre in Glasgow described how an excess of aldosterone greatly increases the risk of stroke and heart failure, thus explaining the results of several previous research studies that revealed more cardiovascular patients dying on low salt diets than on regular diets.

Professor Connell said:

"Aldosterone is a key cardiovascular hormone. The higher the level of aldosterone in your blood, the more likely it is that you will suffer from high blood pressure, which will increase your risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke."

The research revealed that in older people, higher levels of aldosterone in the extracellular fluid are associated with high blood pressure. In young adults, high aldosterone levels predict that they will be more likely to develop hypertension later in their lives. There are a number of factors that determine elevated aldosterone levels in humans, including low birth weights, genetics and diet. More specifically, insufficient salt intakes will stimulate the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) to produce more aldosterone in order to conserve the body's cache of sodium in order to retain osmotic balance.

Elevated aldosterone levels mean that throughout life, certain individuals will be more prone to developing high blood pressure, arterial stiffness and cardiovascular disease. Connell's previous research indicated that aldosterone may be a causal factor in 10% of UK patients with high blood pressure*.

It is difficult to understand why the UK Food Standards Agency, the EU Commission and the Health Canada are all deliberately ignoring this research in their drive to reduce the levels of salt consumed. The mechanistic research work on the malignant role of elevated aldosterone levels upon the cardiovascular system brings far more weight to the salt and health outcomes question than the highly promoted, yet scientifically flawed epidemiological studies on salt and blood pressure.

The human body is an organism governed by biological mechanisms and no amount of bias, hype or imprudent policies will change this. ______ *Connell, J.M.C., Davies, E. 2005. Journal of Endocrinology, 186, 1-20.

Aldosterone is the primary mineralocorticoid hormone in humans. The mineralocorticoids are those steroid hormones, secreted by the adrenal cortex that regulate the balance of water and electrolytes in the body. Working at the distal tubule and collecting ducts of the kidney, aldosterone increases the permeability of their inner membranes to sodium and potassium and is responsible for reabsorbing sodium (Na+) ions and water from the urine back into the blood, while secreting potassium (K+) ions into the urine. Aldosterone is responsible for the reabsorption of virtually all the sodium content in human blood under normal kidney filtration function. Aldosterone also acts on specific receptors in the brain to conserve water and salt by controlling renal tubular resorption.

Unfortunately, chronic high levels of aldosterone in the blood can have major negative consequences for the cardiovascular system, including to induce myocardial fibrosis, renal damage and stiffening of the arteries.

After its discovery more than 50 years ago, the medical interest in aldosterone has been dramatically renewed because of it's immense impact on the cardiovascular system. Aldosterone is now considered to be the most important cardiovascular hormone in the human body.

As an integral part of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), a key function of aldosterone is to conserve salt (sodium chloride), when an insufficient amount is consumed. The latest research published in Clinical Endocrinology indicates that for most healthy humans, anything less than 6 g/day of salt (2300 mg sodium) will be insufficient to prevent the RAAS system from kicking in. That's right - anything less than 6 grams of salt a day!

But the Dietary Reference Intakes recommends that an adequate intake of salt is 3.8 g/day of salt - not 6 g/day. In fact, the dietary reference intakes state that 6 g/day of salt is the tolerable upper limit of salt intake. How can one recommendation state one figure for a maximum intake while the scientific research indicates that very same figure is a minimum intake?

Perhaps the answer lies in the paper given at the Institute of Medicine workshop "The Development of DRIs 1994-2004: Lessons Learned and New Challenges" held in Washington September 18-20, 2007 by Dr. Peter Greenwald, Director of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Dr Greenwald described how most of the figures behind the recommended dietary intakes were based upon expert opinion (the lowest quality evidence) rather than randomized controlled double blind clinical trials (the highest level of evidence).

"Little research of the most useful type (randomized clinical trials) is available, whereas there is an enormous amount of information that is not very meaningful. This needs to be reversed."

Later Dr. Greenwald goes on to say:

"To underscore the importance of "getting the science right," we need only turn to a recent article in the New York Times Magazine written by a respected science reporter. It was entitled "Why can't we trust much of what we hear about diet, health and behavior-related diseases?" (Taubes, 2007). The reporter includes several examples, many in nutrition epidemiology, where there is so much conflicting evidence that people do not believe it. Clearly, we have a serious problem, and we must push for the conduct of definitive studies before we make pronouncements on public health."

As noted in an earlier article, the latest evidence reported by Shapiro, Boaz et al from the Tel Aviv University Medical School reveals that healthy young adults who have been asked to limit their salt intake to 6 g/day (2300 mg sodium) were found to have elevated aldosterone levels indicating that their bodies were in a salt conservation mode. Unfortunately, these elevated levels of aldosterone quickly led to stiffening of the arteries. The conclusion was that for healthy young adults, the Dietary Guideline tolerable upper limit for salt was insufficient to prevent stimulation of aldosterone production. What would happen if the population actually consumed the level of salt recommended by the Guidelines? Would we be condemning an entire population to premature arterial stiffening? Would the government take responsibility for this or would it somehow contrive to blame the food industry for this problem?

In Europe, the EU Commission, led in large part by the UK and its Food Standards Agency has decided that public policy to reduce salt intake will trump basic human physiology. Charging forward pell-mell, the EU Commission, deliberately ignoring the latest scientific evidence, believes that they could not possibly go wrong on this issue because of the support of medical advocates, who have long ago given up any pretence of scientific objectivity.

The world has seen, time and again, that we ignore the science at our peril and as usual, consumers will end up being the victims.

The EU Commission has set the stage for the largest nutrition experiment ever carried out in history with the half billion citizens of the European Union expected to serve as the guinea pigs. When the compulsion to be seen as a driving force for change grabs policy makers by the throat, there is little left to do but allow that change to take place, regardless of the potentially disastrous consequences.

Not wanting to be perceived as being left out of this salt-reduction policy wave, Canada is set to follow suit - again totally ignoring the science and putting Canadian citizens at an elevated risk. One would think that some caution would be in order, but once again, backed by medical advisors and institutions that have done far more advocacy than homework, the government believes it cannot lose on this issue. Since when does ignoring the science and putting a population at an elevated risk give the Government a free pass?

So here we are, in the early part of 2008, with the drumbeat of scientific evidence piling up that the dietary guideline recommendations for sodium are largely irrelevant for the general population and insufficient to prevent production of elevated levels of aldosterone. For the majority of the people, salt, like water is a self-limiting nutrient. We know that aldosterone, chronically maintained at elevated levels as a result of reduced salt intake, will have major negative consequences on the integrity of our cardiovascular system. Like the mythical lemmings that march inexorably over the cliffs to their watery demise, it appears that the EU and Canada are on a track guided by what they don't know, rather than by what they know - by urban myth and prejudice rather than science.

It is hoped that the new Committee selected to establish the Dietary Guidelines for 2010 will not feel obliged to make poor quality, knee-jerk decisions based upon subjective opinion and search out the most current scientific data upon which to establish their recommendations. Our health is at stake here.

Today's Washington Post "word of the day" is "un-an-tici-pat-ed" which staff writer Paul Farhi defines as "lacking foresight in hindsight."

Examples abound. He notes the U.S. military's missteps in Iraq, the D.C. treasurer's problem with escalating bond interest rates, UCLA's point guard's observations about the shooting accuracy of the Mephis Tigers' basketball team in the Final Four semis, Barack Obama's 20 year association with his fiery minister and Hillary Clinton's faulty sniper fire memory. Best, it seems:

While he was press secretary for President Bush, Tony Snow was constantly fending off media questions that implied that officials should have anticipated the unforeseen, he says. "Everyone plays that game," Snow says. "It's always taken as a sign of your incompetence, cupidity or callousness if you didn't anticipate a million different reactions."

Snow says he tried to avoid we-didn't-anticipate responses to questions about the administration's policies because "it probably sounds defensive." Instead, he says, he tried to explain the context in which decisions were made -- what the facts, goals and priorities were at the time -- and let others engage in "retroactive perfectionism."

As toxic as is "retroactive perfectionism," so is our inability to recognize that our understanding DID err and our perspective should become more "perfected." So we don't exactly agree with Farhi who rejects the Tony Frost worldview. He quotes Grant Barrett, the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang.

It's a buck-passing maneuver and a tacit admission of failure"...

"It really means that you didn't have foresight, that you didn't plan well, that you were ignorant before and that you're confessing that you're not ignorant now," Barrett says. "You're basically providing your opponents with the wedge in which they'll place their hammer and chisel to chip away at your credibility. You might as well draw up your letter of resignation."

Often, Barrett says, we-didn't-anticipate can give the perception that you just ignored someone else's anticipation.

We're big into transparency and accountability, but we cannot agree with Farhi. Sure, in many decisions we make, the easy-out of "unanticipated consequences" must be rejected. After all, how "unanticipated" is it that our social values have demographic consequences? That economic mobility in America re-shuffles the poverty "quintiles" every decade? That earmarks "buy" Congressional votes? That disparaging certain foods results in diminished intakes of not only the complained-of nutrients, but all those in that food? The list is endless and reinforces George Santayana's observation that "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Unanticipated consequences, however, are also how we learn. Particularly in science, the discovery that the hypotheses is NOT confirmed shouldn't be an occasion for mourning; celebrate the advance -- one less dead end to pursue. Truth is like an onion being stripped away layer by layer, so disposing of the discarded layer of only partially-understood truth is an advance.

So is it, for example, with our understanding of the role of dietary salt and health. We know all healthy bodies require salt. We know that salt is related to blood pressure. We know that populations with lower blood pressures have less risk of cardiovascular events and mortality. Our investment in studies to examine the question of whether lowering intakes of salt will lower the rates of heart attacks and strokes have been worthwhile -- even if they've produced the contrary, "unanticipated consequence" that the evidence does not support a link of lower sodium diets to improved health. Rather, the resesearch has unmasked other "unanticipated consequences" that we now know well occur when dietary salt is reduced: insulin resistance rises, the kidney produces the hormones renin and aldosterone. "Unanticipated" at one point, they have been predictable for a couple decades now. So, let's face facts and get on with our pursuit of truth. It doesn't look like reducing dietary salt is going to reduce cardiovascular risk. Don't believe it? Fine. Let's test the proposition -- a solution we suggested to HHS nearly two years ago, "up close and personal" after having voiced the recommendation publicly even earlier.

Even worse that the mea culpa that US preventive medicine couldn't have foreseen the "unintended consequences" of low salt diets that has neutered the expected benefits (and perhaps even reversed them such that a number of studies have found greater risk for those who cut back salt ), is the unexcusable insistence on pursuing this discredited strategy and pretending that the "unanticipated consequences" aren't actually happening.

That's what prevented the Bush Administration from recognizing the need for its new strategy in Iraq and what sent UCLA's basketball team home last Saturday. Things may not turn out the way we believe going in. Get over it. Move on.

A cogent op ed piece in yesterday's Washington Times by Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health , voices an observation often registered in this blog: all research reflects the "agenda" of the agency that funds it; the important thing is the quality of the science and the evidence supporting its findings. In "'Conflict' chills research ," Whelan concludes:

A new scientific McCarthyism is alive and well in America today...

The current trend toward cleansing government panels of scientists with any taint of industrial support will leave scientific debate in the hands solely of those who pass the politically-correct test. Credentials, accomplishments, and expertise will be superseded by a candidate's anti-business credentials and leanings. Their adherence to an anti-chemical, anti-business philosophy and the precautionary principle will bring progress to a grinding halt. Is that how we really want crucially important scientific decisions to be made?

In reaching these conclusions, she identifies four reasons why a false "dichotomy of 'good' science versus 'suspect' science based on funding is not only misguided and hypocritical, but - if allowed to dominate the peer-review process - will have an insidious effect on future collaboration between academic scientists and corporations, collaborations that would benefit all of us." Her rationale is right on target:

(1) The decision to regard industry funding as some uniquely corrupting force overlooks the reality that bias can be introduced into science in many forms - not just through corporate funding. Why would a consulting history with Pfizer or DuPont be more a source of potential bias for a researcher than a history of membership in environmental-activist groups like Greenpeace or the Natural Resources Defense Council? Why is corporate funding more suspect than funding from innocuous-sounding but agenda-driven private foundations, such as those committed to ridding the nation of what they perceive to be nasty industrial chemicals? These ideologically fueled foundations are rolling in endowment money and happy to support anti-business researchers in publishing junk science in their custom-made, obscure journals.

(2) There are myriad nonfinancial factors that can influence scientists and impair their objectivity, from strongly held political convictions to the desire for glory in a given field to a "cognitive dissonance factor," which causes a researcher who has spent years trying to prove a point to skew data to yield the desired conclusion. Even a well-meaning scientist operating with no knowledge at all of his financial base of support can be misled by his lifelong, passionate commitment to a given theory and his desire to prove it correct.

(3) The current obsession with corporate ties as a "conflict of interest" is not harmless. It has led to regulations and restrictions in government and academia that have restricted scientists, preventing collaboration with external scientific experts and slowing development of new technologies. Such arbitrary guidelines stifle the progress of public health. Government agencies are being denied access to the best available scientific advice if only those who can claim an "industry-free" resume are left in the candidate pool.

Corporations choose the top scientists when they seek advice - and it is often the less-accomplished scientists, those never sought as consultants or whose beliefs made them averse to contact with corporations, who are left as panel candidates.

(4) Finally, the obsession with "transparency" regarding funding sources has come to obscure what is truly important about scientific research: the quality of the research process and the legitimacy of the findings. If a study is done meticulously and accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, why does it matter who funds it? Does the mere fact a study is funded by a corporation (even an odious corporation) make its conclusions invalid?

There's a new public recognition of the link of salt and health, a "saline solution." As described in our blog back in January, salt-lined "caves" are the latest "in thing" in this week's Time Magazine's Living section. Reporter Jennine Lee-St. John seems to be on a mission to convince Time's readers that the halotherapy in Chicago's Galos Caves replicates the longstanding success of treating Eastern Europeans suffering respiratory ailments with recuperative sessions in salt mines. But it's stress relief that attracts US Midwesterners, not relief from air pollution. Lee-St. John describes the attraction as a "quest for holistic relaxation."

The 9th International Symposium on Salt now has an active website and has issued a Call for Papers. Deadline for abstract submission is December 15, 2008.

The meeting, themed with the Salt Institute slogan (and film title) "Salt: The Essence of Life," will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. It is being sponsored and organized by Salt Institute member China National Salt Industry Corporation . The Salt Institute is co-sponsoring, along with the Indian Salt Manufacturers Association and the Solution Mining Research Institute .

Topics for which papers are invited include the following:

• 1. Reduction of Energy Consumption in Salt Production
• 2. Salt Production Safety
• 3. Salt Sources and Occurrences
• 4. Salt Extraction
• 5. Rock Salt
• 6. Evaporated Salt
• 7. Sea/lake/Solar Salt
• 8. Salt Byproducts
• 9. Salt Processing, Analysis and Quality Assurance
• 10. Salt Markets and Applications
• 11. New Applications
• 12. Applications of New Technologies and Equipments
• 13. Salt and the Environment
• 14. Salt and Health
• 15. Iodized Salt for IDD Elimination
• 16. Salt and History (Salt and Culture)

Keep a watch on the website as the program develops.

Arguing that TV chef Delia Smith's recipes are "loaded with salt," Dr. Graham MacGregor and his Consensus Action on Salt and Health have attacked them as unheathy. MacGregor's crocodile tears flowed as he declared "It's a real pity she seems to be unaware of the dangers of eating too much salt."

What is truly pitful is the easy acceptance of the flawed underlying premise that foods (even diets) "high" in salt -- meaning the diets freely chosen by 6 billion inhabitants of this planet -- are "unhealthy." But don't get us started. See other posts on this blog, the Salt Institute summary or the presidential address at the International Society of Hypertension if you prefer the non-fiction version of this book.

Now's no time for jokes about the taste of British food. Apparently it's not John Bull, but John bullied.

Maybe you should be reading BizCentral.org . That's the opinion offered by Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner .

After commenting about the origin of the word "insourcing," Tapscott admonishes:

By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington.

Obviously, we're both flattered and prone to agree: visit BizCentral.org .