Thank You For Smoking, er Salting! Cargill launches campaign to promote the use of salt in foods...

[backscatter712]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html?hp

The food industry now joins the MOD Squad...

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”

The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate cookies, fresh fruit, ice cream and even coffee. “You might be surprised,” Mr. Brown says, “by what foods are enhanced by its briny kiss.”

By all appearances, this is a moment of reckoning for salt. High blood pressure is rising among adults and children. Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.

[CoffeeCat]

1. They simply don't care if we die...

...as long as it means that they can make a buck.

This is so frickin disgusting.

You can gorge on salt, at unhealthy levels, without having a salt shaker
in your home.

Packaged foods, frozen dinners (even the Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine varieties) are
loaded with salt), soups and most boxed foods---are so loaded with unhealthy levels of salt.

Do you know how much salt is in one cup of cottage cheese? 900mg. That's a lot. How
about pudding? 500mg per small serving cup.

I am very sensitive to salt, so I read labels. I have to work hard to do a low-sodium
diet. There's a lot of hidden salt in food.

And this company has the audacity to promote using a salt shaker, and salting foods
such as ice cream?

They don't care if we die. Simple as that.

[JackRiddler]

2. It never ends, does it. The insanity of capitalism.

Salt is a good thing. It should be packaged and shipped and bought and used.

Along comes a corporation competing for the attention of the consumer against all other companies. When such an organization ships salt in a system that requires and glorifies profit, the incentives create insanity. Actions like these are to be expected. No regard need be given to anything else. It's the narrowest possible focus. A holistic approach can never be.

That being said, a salt merchant of 3,000 years ago would be doing his best to sell more salt than people needed, and telling bullshit to get them to want more salt.

Of course, he wouldn't know that he was not just getting people to give him more money or barter, but that he was also killing them.

Cargill knows it. The people making these decisions may in their private lives be health nuts who would never imagine doing the things they promote for others. How do they live with themselves? They compartmentalize. They don't see a contradiction. This too is our ideology: everyone, tend to your own garden. You're responsible for yourself.

[TlalocW]

3. My mom, aged 77, moved in with my sister and her family

And they all went on an extremely low-salt diet. Going low-salt is healthy by itself, but it also forces you to buy healthier-in-other-ways food. She's lost about 30 pounds in less than half a year. I did it for a while and lost 15. I need to get back on it.

TlalocW

[LooseWilly]

4. Sure, let's do away with salt, and start snorting our iodine

What could go wrong?

Or... maybe we should just ignore the thyroid issues that come with eliminating salt, which has iodine added to it, from our diets? Who's afraid of goiters?

Or, maybe mindless prohibition should be dismissed and people should learn to cope with moderation based upon their individual tolerances and needs... after all, we're all a bunch of fucking snowflakes... perfect in our indi-fucking-viduality... right?

Ohh yeah, and I really wish all those blowhard medical statisticians would just shut the fuck up about my smoking... contribute to a retirement plan for my elder years or shut the fuck up about shit I do that might kill me before I need the contributions that you aren't going to make to my well being.

Just saying...

[backscatter712]

6. Y'know, nobody's talking about banning salt. Just cutting back.

The FDA understands like everyone else that a certain amount of salt is necessary in the human diet. But is it too much to ask that food manufacturers don't use extreme amounts?

Just saying...

[Q3JR4]

5. I'd rather eat lots of

fresh ground pepper.

On an omelet or in a soup, oh yeah, this looks like enough for me,


:9

Q3JR4
_{Mmmmm pepper...}

[asdjrocky]

7. Profit over people...

The American Way.

[backscatter712]

8. Ain't that the truth!