Muslim
Aid carries out post-earthquake rehabilitation in Bam, Iran
 |
|
Salt should be regulated food additive,
group says
24 Feb 2005 17:13:44
GMT
Source: Reuters
| By
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A consumer group sued the
federal government on Thursday, saying that salt is killing tens of
thousands of Americans and that regulators have done too little to
control salt in food.
Despite advisories to take it easy on sodium, Americans are
now consuming about 4,000 milligrams a day -- nearly double the
recommended limit to keep blood pressure under control, the Center
for Science in the Public Interest said.
So the CSPI renewed a lawsuit first filed in 1983 to ask
federal courts to force the Food and Drug Administration to declare
sodium a food additive instead of categorizing it as "generally
recognized as safe." This would give the agency the authority to set
limits for salt in foods.
"There is no way the FDA can look at the science and say with
a straight face that salt is 'generally recognized as safe,'" CSPI
executive director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.
"In fact, salt is generally recognized as unsafe, because it
is a major cause of heart attacks and stroke. The federal government
should require food manufacturers to gradually lower their sodium
levels."
The CSPI said Americans get most of their salt in processed
and restaurant foods. In 1983 the FDA had just begun requiring
labels describing sodium content on some packaged foods so the court
decided to wait and see how it worked.
The new lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia, contends that it has not worked well
because salt content in foods is higher than ever.
"FDA is currently evaluating CSPI's report on salt, including
the recommendations it contains," Kathleen Quinn, a spokeswoman for
the agency, said.
The government says Americans should try to keep sodium to
about 2,300 milligrams a day. "This is about 1 teaspoon," the
American Heart Association says.
Salt is not found only in the salt shaker. For example, a
teaspoon of baking soda contains 1,000 mg of sodium.
Patients with high blood pressure and others at high risk are
told to eat even less salt -- 1,500 mg a day. "Nevertheless, sodium
intake has increased steadily since the 1970s," the CSPI said in a
statement.
"The medical community has reached a consensus that diets
high in sodium are a major cause of high blood pressure as well as
pre-hypertension, or blood pressure just short of high blood
pressure," said Dr. Stephen Havas of the University of Maryland
School of Medicine.
"Today roughly 65 million Americans have high blood pressure
and another 45 million have pre-hypertension."
The CSPI issued a report saying that processed foods and
restaurant fare contribute almost 80 percent of sodium to the U.S.
diet. Frozen dinners are especially high in salt, the report finds.
Depending on the brand, some salad dressings contain nearly a
quarter of the day's allowance of sodium while others are low in
sodium, the report finds.
One chain restaurant's breakfast contains two days' worth of
sodium -- 4,460 mg -- the CSPI report said.
Chinese restaurant meals can be especially, high too. "A
typical order of General Tso's chicken with rice has 3,150 mg," the
group said.
Dr. Claude Lenfant, president of the World Hypertension
League and a former head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute supported the report.
"If we could reduce the sodium in processed and restaurant
foods by half, we could save about 150,000 lives per year," he said.
|
| |
