On the Road to Finland
It is with some dismay that we saw the headline on the UK Food and Drink Federation website, "Salt: Brits Bought 2,000 Tonnes Less in the Past Year ." The article was timed to coincide with "Salt Awareness Week " sponsored by CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) and described the "staggering reduction" in salt consumption which they attributed to the food industry's ongoing efforts to reformulate products to lower salt levels. The staggering reduction amounted to 0.3% which brought forth criticism from CASH chairman, Graham MacGregor, who said
- a fitting rebuttal to an industry that buckled under instead of insisting on food and nutrition policies based on science rather than politics.
It is interesting to note that neither CASH, the UK Food and Drink Federation nor the Food Standards Agency have ever asked that a legitimate health outcomes metric be put in place to show the health benefits to consumers of reducing salt consumption. Are they even interested in measuring the health benefits? Or will they simply follow the example of Finland and reduce salt consumption, then wait a decade or two to find out that their health benefits were reduced? Finland waged a 30-year battle to reduce salt consumption only to discover that there was no health benefit associated with it - on the contrary, their health outcomes performance was not even on a par with their neighbors that did not reduce salt.
The theme of CASH's National Salt Awareness Week , 2008 is Salt and Children. Despite the fact that the most recent National Academy of Sciences Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate (2004) stated:
CASH insists on making reduction recommendations for children. This sort of myth-information based upon statistical manipulation has been commented on earlier.
As was highlighted in a previous article , it is hoped that one day this seemingly inexorable march to misguided policies will halt, so that this issue may be managed by rational thinking and scientific evidence.
