"60 Minutes" commentary on difficulty of low-salt diets
CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney has a way of speaking for the common man. Yesterday, "60 Minutes" revisited a 1996 commentary where Rooney complains about the difficulty consumers like him would have choosing a low-sodium diet. You can read the transcript or watch a video clip of "Diet Guidelines Get Andy Salty " online.
Presumably, Rooney is supported by a research staff that should protect him from such gaffes as equating salt and sodium. Instead, this "common man" highlights that ignorance, suggesting that he feels normal consumers have a hard time with the distinction (yes, Andy, they are different; about 40% of salt -- sodium chloride -- is sodium and the other 60% chloride). Interesting. He concludes, observing that the American Heart Association advises against more than one stalk of celery n a pot of stew; "the other day at a party I ate two stalks of celery so, if I'm not on next week because I dropped dead, blame that second stalk of celery."
Respect for authority, of course, doesn't lead to compelling, humorous commentary, so there are likely many who share Rooney's disdain for such dietary strictures. Where needed, then, the credibility of advice to reduce dietary sodium is undermined because of the over-reaching, picayune nannying delivery of what may be life-saving advice.
Whether the advice is life-saving is the real question. Difficult as it may be to effectuate a low-sodium diet, the real question is the other side of the equation: why reduce sodium in the first place? Most Americans consume a moderate sodium diet (3,500 mg sodium, right in the middle of the global average and about midway in the 2,300 - 4,600 "hygienic safety range" identified by Swedish expert Dr. Bjorn Folkow). All studies of the health consequences of reducing dietary sodium fail to identify any population benefit for Americans; some find additional risk.
So, Andy, before you dust off that commentary for a third re-run, we suggest you change your focus and lament that this nutritional advice is not only unpalatable, it is likely unnecessary -- and join the Salt Institute in its call for a controlled trial of the health consequences of reducing dietary salt - or sodium.
