Mr. Bloomberg's actions against salt should be a clear sign to us that the more government gets involved in the provision of health care, the more government will assume the authority to tell us what lifestyle factors (including dietary choices) will be tolerated.

A few observations:

• High blood pressure is admittedly a very serious risk factor for heart disease, stroke and other life-threatening ailments. It is an underdiagnosed and undertreated condition.

• Some people are "salt sensitive," and if they are consuming high levels of salt, they will see their blood pressure rise. Typically, a patient with a high blood pressure reading (at multiple doctor's office visits) will be asked if he or she is on a high-salt diet. (Most people do not know how much salt they are consuming and might say they never use salt because they don't add salt to food - unaware of the salt in their processed food.) The physician may recommend a careful dietary analysis and salt reduction - but the fact is that this "less salt" advice works for very few people. Most with high blood pressure need to have it controlled with drugs.

• There is no evidence available to back up the claim that we could prevent "tens of thousands" of deaths by reducing salt intake nationwide. This is a number pulled out of Mr. Bloomberg's hat.

• Salt is an essential element in our diet (and in preventing spoilage, enhancing flavor and improving shelf life). For example, we need it for hydration. Older people, in particular, need to ensure that they have enough salt in their diet. There are those, including Dr. Michael Alderman, a hypertension specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who feel that an across-the-board recommendation of salt reduction - without any data at hand to show that it is effective in reducing hypertension or is even safe - would put all of us in a large, uncontrolled experiment. In speaking of the proposed salt reduction initiatives, Dr. Alderman says, "I am always worried about unintended consequences."

Mr. Bloomberg and his associates would save far more lives by abandoning the salt-reduction plans and instead instituting programs to get all adults screened for hypertension - through simple blood pressure readings - with follow-up administration of safe and effective medications to bring those specific individuals' blood pressure to normal, healthy levels.