Growing up in Montréal was a gastronomic delight. Like most other cities in North America, there was a great variety of ethnic foods, but this city's French flavor seemed to demand more of its restaurants. One day my older brother dragged me over to see a new restaurant that had just opened. It was the city's first pizzeria and he thought that the sign in the window was hilarious. There in all its colorful neon splendor was a large sign that blared "Genuine Italian Pizza - Just like in New York!!" On a smaller printed sign in a corner of the window I read the ingredients: anchovies, capers, mozzarella, prosciutto and then glanced up to my brother for an explanation of each. Real Italian pizza - just like in New York.
Earlier this week, New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced Bill A10129 stating that “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises.” The penalty for each infraction will be $1,000.
How would such a bill affect New York's famous pizza? Could they still say real Italian pizza - just like in New York? Salt is an integral part of almost every ingredient in pizza. Salt has to be added to the dough in order to condition it so that it will be pliable enough to be stretched, tossed in the air and twirled into a pizza. Omit the salt and the dough will contract back into a ball of tough rubber. Salt has to be added to the tomato sauce in order to moderate the mild bitterness that is normally found in all tomatoes. That is why a slice of fresh tomato tastes so much better with a smidge of salt. Mozzarella, like all other cheese is cured with salt. Both anchovies and capers are packed in salt (at least the best ones are). Salt is also used to cure prosciutto and is the reason that trichinosis has never been found in this type of Italian ham. Can anyone imagine Italian sausages and any type of edible olives made without salt?
Without salt, all dressed would mean a crustless pizza topped with the emperor’s clothes. Is that real Italian pizza? Of course not - so why change it? What's wrong with Italian pizza? Is it making Italians ill? Does pizza give Italians hypertension?
In fact, Italians eat far more salt than we do here. Aside from olives, which can only be consumed if the bitterness is removed by soaking in brine for almost a month, there is Parmesan - the king of cheeses, which happens to be cured for 20 days in saturated salt brine baths, Gorgonzola cheese whose blue mold will only grow in a high salt medium, bacalla or salt cod, bottarga or salted tuna row, and anchovies, capers, salami, etc. etc. etc. Yet, Italians have amongst the best cardiovascular figures in the world because they eat a balanced diet, replete with salads and vegetables. In fact there have been several publications attributing the decline of disease to the consumption of vegetables and fruit. In North America, of course, there is full access to vegetables and fruits, however, our leaders prefer to hype approaches based on magic bullets, such as salt reduction, instead of promoting a balanced diet that every nutritionist knows will be far more effective. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz' bill is just such an example. Had Ortiz looked into the matter a little more deeply, he would have learned that salt is an essential nutrient and that the medical and scientific literature demonstrates that low salt intakes can lead to a cascade of negative health impacts including increased stress, reduced cognition and metabolic syndrome.
But man does not live by pizza alone. How will a ban on salt affect other foods in New York? How would New York's famous deli's such as Katz' or the Stage fare? Pastrami, corned beef and dill pickles will have to go by the wayside - no question. A Reuben sandwich will be no different than a skinless frankfurter without any meat in it. Well, maybe New York can live without deli's.
What about Italian restaurants? There may not be pizza but what about prosciutto e melone? Perhaps that can be changed to melone e melone and be served as a dessert instead as an appetizer? Spaghetti bolognese might work if the bolognese sauce and the parmesan cheese are left out; but plain spaghetti boiled in unsalted water will have to fill both sides of the menu page. You might try Chinese or Japanese foods, but without the vast array of soy-based sauces, what will they taste like? How’s about....Mexican....Tunisian.....Indian....? There must be something? Hmmm....got it! New York will no longer out be dubbed the Big Apple. Henceforth, New York will be known as the Big Boiled Egg.
What does the future hold for New York? Don’t be surprised if you see notices affixed to the walls of post offices declaring, “The authorities are offering a reward of $50,000 leading to the arrest of the owners of Pizza Romano, the illegal restaurant operation that has openly defied Bill A10129. Every time police close in on them, these fly-by-night operators close up shop and open elsewhere. They can be easily identified by the sign in their window, “Genuine Italian Pizza – Just Like in Montreal!!””
The last week has brought a media frenzy to the debate over population-wide salt reduction thanks to the hypocritical and nonsensical campaign by NYC's Mayor Bloomberg and his administration. The Salt Institute has been in the center of the fray as we seek to get fair media coverage from folks who parrot inaccurate sound bites based on faulty science and a political agenda based on a "villain of the day" mentality. We are happy to report we have made great strides in getting out "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say. SI staff appeared on CBS and Fox News, weighed in on approximately 20 interviews with print media and appeared on one national radio show and another large radio show in Miami (NYC's sixth borough).
In addition, the tide seems to be turning as the national sentiment is rejecting the nanny state mentality and seems keen on personal choice and liberty. There has been a shift in reporting on this issue since Bloomberg and company first publicly entertained the notion of population-wide sodium reduction one year ago. Perhaps our favorite editorial in the last week appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Smack is bad, but the crackdown is on salt by Eric Felten does a fine job of pointing out the lunacy of a city which teaches its residents how to properly shoot up heroin, but strong arms food producers into limiting sodium content. We, like Felten, join in a collective chorus of "huh?" John Stossel also did a fine job of making the case against government food nannies in this Fox News segment.
We are encouraged to see many rising up to fight back against nanny state public policy which ignores sound science. Fox News online ran a story "Restaurant chefs boiling over NYC Mayor's salt crackdown." And a new coalition has popped up to fight back: My Food. My Choice. is made up of businesses, restaurant owners and ethnic groups (they see the policy as an attack on ethnic cuisine) and consumers.
Earlier this year a New Jersey startup "food manufacturer," Bon Vivant International , began marketing "NutraSalt an all-natural, low-sodium sea salt," claiming "66 percent less sodium than other salt products."
Well, I guess this "food manufacturer" makes other things than food. Food grade salt is required to have at least 97% sodium chloride. So NutraSalt cannot be food grade salt.
The founder claims: "The product can be sold as table salt and as an ingredient to food-service companies and food makers."
It would be interesting to know which "food-service companies and food makers" are using non-food-grade salt. Inquiring minds want to know.
Scientists generally accept that 24-hour urine samples are the most accurate means of measuring sodium intake -- the "gold standard" for dietary sodium just as randomized controlled trials are the "gold standard" in the hierarchy of levels of evidence.
With that as background, how should we understand the claim by the Heart and Stroke Foundation (Canada) which "revealed" today that "500,000 kilograms of salt have been removed from the food supply in the last four years by companies participating in the Health Check program." HSF's health policy director equated the amount to "20 dump trucks of salt."
On its surface, the claim is that the total food sold over the past four years bearing a Health Check logo contains a half million kilos less salt (that figures to 550 tons of salt). Every year, Canadians consume about 130,000 tons of salt. So over four years, Canadians consumed a half billion tons of salt (520,000). In other words, this effort is claimed to reduce Canadians' salt intake by 0.1%.
But is it true? The claim can only be evaluated if we also know the answers to these questions:
- Compared to the baseline four years ago, what was the composition of the foods bearing the HSF label? If the quantities and/or configuration of the sales differed, what can be said about the 500,000 gram number? If people, for example, are eating less of these foods (because they don't taste good or cost more) the number is invalid. But even more:
- Compared to baseline, what other foods are Canadians eating and in what quantities? If they are eating less salt in Health Check foods, are they simply eating that salt in other foods?
No, the entire exercise is entirely bogus.
What we need to test the proposition (and we're all for the test!) is to track the total sodium consumption for a representative sample of Canadians randomized to consume a diet including as much as possible all the Heart Check foods and compare that over a year or two, with those randomized into a control group which eats whatever they want. The outcome would be ascertained by frequent collection of 24-hour urine specimens and the analysis done in blinded fashion.
Evidence suggests that physiology determines sodium consumption, not package labels. If an individual consumes "low salt" foods, they may simply eat additional quantities of food (and extra calories) to satisfy this innate "salt craving" automatically determined by the body to reflect that individual's varying need. That's why research shows such a consistent pattern of salt intake between populations and over time .
Most visible among their food industry peers in claiming "credit" for reducing salt in their product lines, ConAgra Foods and Campbell Soup both have declining customer satisfaction scores from baseline, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index released today. ConAgra, in fact, finished dead last among the 13 named larger companies (and below the "all others" category).
On a 0-100 point scale in the ACSI, food manufacturers averaged 83 points with Campbell Soup lagging in 12th place with 82 and ConAgra dropping 6 points to 78. Leaders were H.J. Heinz with 89 followed, at 87, by Hershey, Quaker (PepsiCo) and Mars.
ACSI produces indexes for 10 economic sectors, 44 industries, and more than 200 companies and federal or local government agencies. Among all industries , manufacturers earned 81.5. Laggards were newspapers, cable/satellite TV companies and airlines (63 and 64). They, together with telephone companies (69), were the only private sector businesses with customer satisfaction as low as the federal government at 69.
ACSI is sponsored by the American Society for Quality, the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and Cloes Fornell International.
William Grimes book Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York , reviews the City's rich ethnic heritage evolving out of humble beginnings as Nieuw Amsterdam. He cites the increasing popularity of "ethnic" dining as the City's greatest achievement as a "food city."
By ironic coincidence, the book appeared a year ago, when the City launched an initiative that would eviscerate the sale of ethnic foods in Big Apple grocery outlets and decimate ethnic dining in the city. The health department, basing its campaign more on political correctness than sound science, is trying to persuade grocers and restaurateurs to provide shoppers and diners only low-sodium versions of the foods they love. Imagine a low-salt salt bagel. How about a corned beef on rye or hot pastrami? No, can't have that, they're cured in saltwater. Choose your favorite ethnic cuisine and you'll find it impossible to enjoy without salt; it's the quintessential ingredient in ethnic foods.
Literally millions of immigrants entered the US through New York City and, for example, there are 3.3 million Italian-Americans in the New York metro area and extensive number who themselves or whose families emigrated from Greece or other Mediterranean countries -- whose diet is deemed the healthiest in the world (pdf 592.83 kB) . Even though newly-reelected, I doubt Mayor Bloomberg wants to tell them to turn their back on their ethnic culinary heritage -- or encourage them to dine in Hoboken, Hempstead or Yonkers.
One nice thing about science is that observations on cause and effect can often be linked to one another. A case in point is the market study out this week which reported that the sales of potato chips have increased dramatically since our economy began to tank. According to the international market firm, Mintel , potato chip sales jumped a whopping 22% from 2007 to 2009. Analysts went on to forecast that as the economy improves potato chip sales will begin to taper off.
No surprise here. The near collapse of our economy has induced levels of consumer stress that have not been seen for decades . Psychological stress is characterized in the human body by high levels of circulating hormone, cortisol - also referred to as the "stress hormone ". Science has shown, both in animal models and in humans, that high levels of salt consumption are very effective in reducing levels of circulating cortisol .
Call them comfort foods or mood stabilizers, potato chips and other salty snacks are incredibly effective at reducing stress, a common condition in today's ever-changing world. The Mintel market report dramatically demonstrates the nutritional value of salt in coping with stress. Consumers know what to eat, they're just not sure why.
Everyone does it. But with this book you can do it right, enjoy yourself and respect yourself in the morning. In short, this isn't just another how-to-do-it manual with "more than 50 recipes." Enjoy Valerie Aikman-Smith'sSalt: Cooking With the World's Favorite Seasoning .
The Scottish-born author is a trained chef, but works in Los Angeles as a "food stylist" for TV and movies (like "Titanic" and "Ocean's Eleven"). Amazon.com's blurb offers:
Salt in all its forms is a hot culinary trend. It enhances any savory dish and makes the taste buds sing. In this beautiful book, top cook and food stylist Valerie Aikman-Smith introduces you to all kinds of salts, from Hawaiian Red Alaea Salt to Jurassic Salt. Her Appetizers include tasty Olive Suppli, Gazpacho with Smoked Salted Croutons, and fun Popcorn with Chili Salt. In Entrees, you'll find the classic salt-crust method with new twists, such as indian-spiced Lamb in a Salt Crust, or how about Spicy Pork Satay with Roast Salted Peanut Sauce, or a refreshing Peach Caprese with Curry Salt? In Sides and Breads you'll discover tempting flatbreads and pretzel bites, and you'll be captivated by Valerie's Drinks and Sweets. How about a Black Olive Martini or Bloody Mary with Celery Salt, or a Chocolate Chip Cookie with Sea Salt? Be amazed as the flavors mingle in your mouth. Finally, a chapter of Rubs, Butters, and Brines offers you dozens of versatile ways to jazz up grilled meat or fish, vegetable crudites or potato chips, or use them with your own recipes. Once you've tried Valerie's stunning recipes you will never look at salt in the same way again.
A new book is out celebrating bacon. Bacon: A Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat was written by Heather Lauer, whose blog "Bacon Unwrapped " is very popular. In case you didn't know, there are bacon festivals all around the country and celebrations of every form of bacon under the sun. Bacon lollipops. Bacon ties. Chocolate-covered bacon. It seems that there isn't anything that isn't better with bacon. The key to bacon is salt, of course. And that is precisely why it tastes so good!
It is difficult to imagine how many lives have been saved over thousands of years by the process of preserving meat with salt. Heather covers the history of bacon in the book along with many interesting facts.
I must admit, that about a year a half ago I met with Heather for lunch (we have known each other through our public affairs/public policy work) and I was surprised to hear that she had a bacon blog and was in the process of writing a book about bacon. Not being a foodie, I couldn't imagine reading an entire book about food, but I'm a convert. In my opinion, bacon is right up there with chocolate in the perfect food category.
Brian Wingfield of Forbes Magazine recently wrote the following in his article, “Fat Tax Could Be Panacea For Health Reform:”
According to a 73 page study released Monday by “experts” at the Urban Institute and the University of Virginia , aggressive public policy interventions that helped bring down tobacco use could be modified and applied to fight obesity, including
• imposing excise or sales taxes on fattening food of little nutritional value, as the tax on cigarettes has proven to be the single most effective weapon in decreasing tobacco use;
• putting graphic, simple labels on the front of packaged foods showing their nutritional value in a form that consumers can easily understand and use;
What is a fattening food that should be taxed? A Twinkie at 150 calories and 5 grams of fat per serving? Perhaps we ought to go upscale and consider a serving of high end chocolate mousse pie at 247 calories and 15 grams of fat per serving - obviously deserving of a higher tax. If you're not interested in dessert, then how about a serving of fruit or vegetables. A convenient compromise would be a serving of avocado, which is botanically a fruit, but usually served as a vegetable. A serving of avocado is 240 calories with 22 grams of fat! Clearly anything with more than 20 grams of fat per serving should be dinged with a surtax above and beyond the normal fat tax.
It goes without saying that green foods (fruits and vegetable) contain the lowest levels of fat and should be exempt from tax.
Obesity is the result of consumption of calories in excess of calories expended. It is not the result of the types of foods consumed. Vegetarians and vegans are known to be very concerned about their health and are defined by the green foods they eat. Yet, obesity is a problem among this category of green food consumers as well. The June 2005 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition describes this in the article. “Risk of overweight and obesity among semivegetarian, lactovegetarian, and vegan women .” Overweight or obesity (BMI 25) was 29% among both semivegetarians and vegans, and 25% among lactovegetarians. For them, vegetarian and vegan foods are fattening. Should they be taxed?
Using the reduction in tobacco use as a model to influence food choices is an absurd notion. Tobacco use causes cancer. There is no strategy that tobacco consumers can employ to mitigate its negative health impact, other than complete cessation of use. Eating food does not cause cancer nor does it result in obesity. Eating an excess of calories over what is expended does result in obesity. It’s not the type of food that is the problem, it’s the amount that’s consumed, as demonstrated by the vegetarian/vegan example above.
Consumers have to be informed on all aspects of obesity and then be left to their own personal choices. If eating a twinkie makes me happy and I burn off any extra calories by cycling around the block a couple of extra times, then that is my priviledge. I prefer that to not eating the foods I enjoy, then getting into a dour mood and kicking the first squirrel that comes into reach. A tax on any class of food or beverage is nothing more than a sumptuary law, no different than all the other sumptuary laws enacted throughout history that have failed. Social authoritarianism does not work and can lead to dangerous unintended consequences. Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages will drive children to drink cheap concoctions laced with artificial sweeteners. Do we know the long tem consequences of a lifetime of artificial sweetener consumption or is it simply enough to put a warning label on the product (as in the case of saccharin)? Will taxing of higher fat foods drive consumers to overeat more fruits and vegetables? Fruits and vegetables have high fiber and phytic acid levels, which means that other nutrients in the diet may not be digested properly.
The fat or beverage tax is another simplistic attempt to arrive at a superficial solution to a lack of a rational food culture. It is the abandonment of confidence in the average consumer’s ability to think and make free and informed choices once they are educated.
It is far better to follow the old proverb; Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Over the past six months the public's priorities in food choices has shifted from "freshness, health and the environment" to "taste, price, healthfulness and convenience" according to dualing surveys, one by IPSOS and another by the International Food Information Council.
The IPSOS survey conducted six months ago and released June 11 was summarized by IPSOS Executive Vice President David Pring:
We are seeing a global consumer movement toward heightened consciousness of health, wellness and environmental factors in their food purchasing decisions....We are also seeing that taste, convenience and product difference – aspects that were probably more characteristic of food product drivers towards the end of the last millennium – are taking a back seat in a world now more focused on making a positive impact on freshness and health as well as the sustainability of the planet.
Wait a minute, IFIC would respond. Released slightly earlier, the 2009 IFIC survey concluded that, consistent with all past surveys, taste is the number one factor influencing food purchases, but price has increased steadily as the second most important factor. 87% of consumers consider taste to have some or great impact, price 74% (up from 64% four years ago), while healthfulness trails at 61% and convenience last of the four choices at 52%. Looking just at those who consider each factor of "great impact," taste is #1 with 53%, price next with 43% and healthfulness and convenience at 26%.
For ourselves, we see little evidence supporting the IPSOS headline that "Freshness, Health and the Environment Matter Most in the Kitchens of the World; Global Consumer Priorities Regarding Food Products Shift away from Taste, Convenience." Taste reigns!
What do you think?
Fearmongering prevails. Fearing their diets may mean risk of chronic disease, consumers seek to lower their risks by using "healthy" foods, whose unhealthy ingredients are reduced or eliminated. But is seems there is no escape: health conscious, label-reading food purchasers should be fearful, too according to Wall Street Journal Health section reporter Melinda Beck. Beck asks "What's really in many 'healthy' foods?" She answers using salt substitutes as an example where consumers are misled into thinking "healthy" confers some health benefit to them personally. Regarding salt substitutes, she explains:
If you're trying to cut down on salt, check with your doctor before you start using a salt substitute. Most contain potassium chloride, which can exacerbate kidney problems and interact badly with some heart and liver medications.
With only a bit more research, Beck could have noted the other "healthy" additives used to replace salt. Besides potassium chloride, salt replacers include calcium chloride, magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts) and various metal ion replacers as well as various other proprietary chemicals.
Food manufacturers also try to reduce the natural salt content of their foods by using "salt enhancers" that include: 5-ribonucleotides, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, inosine 5-monophosphate, 5'-guanidylic acid, glycine monoethyl ester, L-lysine, L-arginine, lactates, Mycosent, Trehalose, L-ornithine, Ornithyl-β-alanine, monosodium glutamate and Alapyridaine (N-(1-Carboxethyl)-6-hydroxymethyl-pyridinium-3-ol).
Salt is a natural bitterness inhibitor. To give "healthy" -- but bitter -- low-sodium foods acceptable taste, food producers sometimes replace salt with 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid. Now that's real "health food"!
Dietary salt's use in food is as Winston Churchill said about democracy being "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
The headline in yesterday's USA Today declared: "Food doesn't have to take up a huge chunk of your budget." Reporter Jayne O'Donnell reports that the Food Marketing Institute will release a report Sunday showing that more consumers are eating at home: 85% eat a home cooked meal three or more times a week, up from 75% in 2006 (personally, I find that astoundingly low, but, then, my wife's an excellent cook and backyard barbeque season is upon us so maybe my home-cooked lifestyle is abnormal).
Since the end of WWII, there has been a notable trend for Americans to eat more foods prepared outside the home, both in restaurants and packaged, processed foods, perhaps heated at home, but not "home cooked." Depending on FMI's definition, perhaps the country's current economic travails will blunt or reverse a parallel trend: a gradual erosion of round can sales of table salt: a reliable indicator of the amount of "home cooking" being done.
"The most standard of seasonings has gone gourmet," proclaims Condé Nast. The publisher of advisories for the well-heeled and well-traveled has produced a Salt Food Guide to help its upscale readers understand the variety of salts available to them through gourmet stores and, increasingly, in fine restaurants. See the slide show .
We have much to be thankful for, more than a one-day holiday allows. And we all can be thankful for the myriad benefits made possible by salt. Not only will Thanksgiving tables feature "Neptune's Gift" as families gather to celebrate, but more and more holiday chefs will be brining their turkeys this year. Try a Google search yourself: 1.8 million websites offer advice on brining. While a few offer advice more practical in the months ahead , most explain how soaking your turkey in salt brine will produce the tenderist, tastiest bird you've ever had.
As the top-listed Webervirtualbullet site explains:
Today there's a surge in popularity of "flavor brining", a term coined by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly in the book The Complete Meat Cookbook .
While traditional brining was meant to preserve meat, the purpose of flavor brining is to improve the flavor, texture, and moisture content of lean cuts of meat. This is achieved by soaking the meat in a moderately salty solution for a few hours to a few days. Flavor brining also provides a temperature cushion during cooking--if you happen to overcook the meat a little, it will still be moist.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving.
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