CSPI Calls for Less Salt in Restaurant Meals

Their testimony points out that salt raises high blood pressure and increases the risk of developing stroke, heart attacks and kidney disease, and that reducing sodium levels as they suggest would save 150,000 lives and billions of dollars a year. Many restaurant meals contain more than the recommended maximum of sodium for a whole day.

Two of the meals their researchers sampled that have particularly high sodium content are Red Lobster's Admirals' Feast with Caesar salad, creamy lobster-topped mashed potato, cheddar bay biscuit, and a lemonade (7,106 mg); Chili's buffalo chicken fajitas with tortillas and condiments, and a Dr Pepper (6,916 mg). (To convert sodium content to salt content, multiply the sodium by 2.5. On packaged food labels, more than 500mg of sodium per 100g is high, less than 200mg sodium is low.)

A spokesperson for the restaurant industry responded by saying that the industry had made "tremendous strides" on the sodium issue.

Well to me, that response by a restaurant industry spokesperson is breath-takingly complacent. If, after "tremendous strides", their meals still contain worryingly high levels of salt, consider how in the past they were even more harmful to health than now.

As well as the health problems caused or exacerbated by high salt levels that are listed above, there are many others, among them an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and of high cholesterol levels, most cancers, impaired liver function, and also, you may be surprised to learn, obesity, particularly child obesity.

Ten years seems to me to be far too long a time period to allow for this crucially important public health measure to be aimed at. When it comes to saving lives and reducing avoidable physical illnesses and psychological suffering, the public good should override the self-serving interests of the food industry.

Margaret Wilde http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/sodium_foods.html