Headlines & features

New York City councilman Tony Avella registered strong exception with the way Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his health commissioner Thomas Frieden are trying to restrict dining choices in the Big Apple. He told the NY Post that the plan to hire a consultant to study the challenge isn't worth the cost: "I think it's a waste of city money," said City Councilman Tony Avella. "It's more nanny government. They tell us what to do, and they'll use studies to back it up and justify it."

Separating fact from opinion, researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, released in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine "A Systematic Review of the Evidence Supporting a Causal Link Between Dietary Factors and Coronary Heart Disease ." Using meticulous, pre-determined methodology, the researchers sifted through 5,705 medical journal articles on diet and heart disease, applied the rigorous Bradford Hill Criteria for Assessing Causation, and analyzed 146 prospective cohort studies and 94 randomized controlled trials to answer the question: what does medical science tell us about diet and heart disease? As USA Today commented: "What we know for sure about diet and what protects the heart is a relatively short list." And entirely missing from that list, much to the chagrin of political nutritionists who have been beating the drum for salt reduction is, no surprise to us, salt.

President Barack Obama nominated Cass R. Sunstein to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. OIRA is the key regulatory agency and responsible for enforcing such laws as the Data Quality Act. The Salt Institute reported on the likely nomination back in January. The President said:

As one of America’s leading constitutional scholars, Cass Sunstein has distinguished himself in a range of fields, including administrative law and policy, environmental law, and behavioral economics. He is uniquely qualified to lead my Administration’s regulatory reform agenda at this crucial stage in our history. Cass is not only a valued advisor, he is a dear friend and I am proud to have him on my team.

Two letters today challenge John Tierney’s excellent article “Public Policy Makes Test Subjects of Us All.” We responded that both letters miss the point. Susan Bagg suggests that “the American food industry might …be creating a sodium dependency” leading to obesity while Jerome Delamater accuses the food industry of "making test subjects of us all.” Both letters imply that the food industry is using more salt than previously and this is creating a health problem. But the supposition is just plain wrong. Salt intakes over the past century are unchanged and now evidence explains why: salt appetite is regulated by the brain, not by our taste buds, not even by our conscious choices and especially not by either the food industry nor NYC health chief Thomas Frieden. See “Salt Appetite” by the Salt Institute at http://www.saltinstitute.org/content/download/261/1495 . The point is: the human body requires salt; it’s an essential nutrient. And we have a built-in appetite to make sure we get it.

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John Tierney's Science column in this week's NY Times recounts "some of the scientific uncertainties about the benefits of reducing salt" and asks whether politicians should intrude in the controversy between scientists to try to engineer population-wide salt reduction.

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The nutrient value of cherry tomatoes can be raised by irrigating them with dilute seawater (~one-half percent salt), according to a new study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry .

Compass Minerals has invested $3.6 million acquiring the salt distribution business of Cutler-Magner, based in Duluth, MN, reports the Kansas City Business Journal . The acquisition adds a salt processing/packaging facility, sales and distribution network and all 19 of C-M's salt employees.

Mitsui/Shark Bay expands. Mitsui is expanding the capacity of the crystalizer ponds at its Onslow, Western Australia saltworks to raise production by 500,000 tons per year, according to the April SSRF Report of a March 17 story in the Japanese-language Chemical Daily .

A new and more accurate method has been found to locate trapped survivors of underground mining in disaster situations. University of Utah researchers have developed a system thaIt involves bolting iron plates to the walls of tunnels at regular intervals and placing sledgehammers nearby. The idea is that, in the event of a collapse, survivors able to reach one of the plates would bash it to create vibrations that are detected by a string of geophones, standard devices used to measure seismic activity, placed on the surface along the line of the mine. <full article >

K+S acquires Morton Salt – Transaction creates global leader in salt
Excellent opportunity to grow global salt business of K+S
Transaction value of USD 1.675 billion
100% cash consideration, fully underwritten
Closing expected mid year 2009
Transaction marks another milestone of K+S’ strategy towards balanced growth and enhanced profitability