"sodium intake" news and stories

Ignorance is bliss, but it's not very good for your health. U.S. News Health reports that 76% of 1,000 American polled agreed with the statement "wine can be good for your heart." Hey, the good news is: That's true, but only if you consume two glasses per day if you're a man and one glass if you're a woman. Otherwise -- and here comes the really bad news -- excess drinking can lead to all kinds of problems like irregular heartbeat, obesity, cancer, high blood pressure and even heart failure.

Not only that, but Americans are also ill-informed about sodium, believing (56% of those surveyed) that ordinary table salt is the primary source in our diets. (61% believed, incorrectly, that sea salt had less sodium than regular salt.) All you have to do to understand that most of our sodium comes from processed foods-soups, snacks, condiments and canned foods like tomato sauce (why do you think they taste so good?) -- is to pick up a container of seemingly harmless cottage cheese and read the label. It will show that an eight-ounce serving contains about 720 milligrams of sodium, or half your daily recommended intake.

Americans are also famously bad at geography, but there's no word yet on whether young people are having trouble locating Napa and Salt Lake City on maps.

After successfully forcing NYC restaurants to post calorie counts on menus and to stop cooking with trans fat, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a war on salt. A recent New York Times article explains that he's going after packaged food companies and mass-produced restaurant meals. Apparently, they contribute 80 percent of the sodium in the average American diet. Over the next five years, Dr. Frieden aims to cut the level of salt intake by 25 percent.

Is salt so bad for us? Salt, in some people (not everyone) can lead to high blood pressure which is a leading factor in the incidence of heart attack and stroke. At the same time, many scientists do not believe sodium intake is directly related to high blood pressure. In the past, studies comparing hypertensive populations found that those on low-salt diets had more than four times as many heart attacks as those on normal-sodium diets.

Although the health link may not be clear, what's obvious is that excess of most ingredients cannot be healthy. And, foods at fast-food chains, like McDonald's, are outrageously high in sodium. It seems that if dealt with in a reasonable way, Dr. Frieden's goal can be quite progressive. What do you think?