Salt of the Earth.

Preface: This is neither that good nor especially current, but I thought hauling something out of the "draft" menu might give people something to chat about while I get my ISP issues worked out at home.

My good friend Dublin Saab had some things to say about a lawuit on behalf of a consumer safety group attempting to force the FDA to reclassify salt as a food additive. It is presently listed under the heading "generally known as safe." My problem is this: I feel lawsuits are the worst way possible to proceed regarding issues of individual responsibility; I also am concerned that restaurants are by and large unwilling to self-regulate gratuitous sodium content in their foods. MacDonald's could preemptively shut most of these people up by switching to low sodium dressings and allowing people to salt their own fries instead of doing it for them. But they don't. Now, the best argument in response to this is of course: don't eat at MacDonald's or Chinese places. Fine; I don't. But childeren get no say in the matter--and MacDonald's and Burger King have made billions by spending millions specifically advertising to children. Should they be allowed to? Of course; it's a free country. But compare the number of times you've seen a MacDonald's (or White Castle, or Wendy's, or KFC, you get the point) promoting high-sodium products versus the number of times you've seen public service ads telling you about the danger of sodium consumption. Since kids watch more TV than anybody, they are given a steady education from birth on just why they should eat Fritos, which is of course about the single most unhealthy thing a person could eat this side of straight mercury. As a result, we have children consuming enough sodium to retain a keg of water and enough fat that we now have the most obese generation of children in all of the known history of humanity.

How to fix it? Well, I for one like to pine for the good old days when people actually knew how to cook. Fresh fruits and vegetables have little to no sodium, and most poultry and fish is naturally rather low. Hence, how much salt is in that kind of meal can be determined mostly by the question "how much salt did I add?" Whatever the reasons, though, those days are gone and don't seem to be coming back any time soon. So that's no good. Do you spend more money on public education campaigns? I'm not sure I've ever really known one of those to be effective unless, as is the case with smoking, the government gets all of the airtime and the industry gets none. (And even then, I'm not sure how effective it is.) Plus, unless you wring a settlement out of the restaurant industry, that's taxpayer dime, and people probably want it spent elsewhere.

So the original problem remains. Millions of people, a certain percentage children who don't get to choose, are consuming far too much sodium. Their health is suffering as a result. Neither of these facts, as far as I can tell, is in serious dispute. There are, in a basic way of looking at the matter, two options: something can be done about it, or nothing can be done about it. If the former is chosen, then we go on to who the doer is.

Truth in advertising on behalf of the industry would be a good way to go. But they never do it on their own (who, after all, wants to spend money to tell the consumer their product is bad for them?). And when laws are proposed to force them to comply, they lobby massively against them and refuse to comply whenever possible. Just how prominent are those signs in Micky D's telling you that their food is saturated-fat and salt drenched shit?

I for one favor the a stick/carrot approach from the FDA putting the processed food industry on notice: you can fix this yourselves in a five or ten year time frame, or we can fix it for you. No regulation would eventually be necessary, because you'd be telling corporations to reduce an (admittedly minute, unless we count stolen shakers) cost, while losing no competetive advantage, because everyone else would be lowering sodium content at the same time. Unless there's a lame-duck Democrat as President (and probably not then), that of course won't happen, as Congress (both sides of the aisle) is firmly in the pocket of the food industry.

So here's what we're left with. The food industry is contributing to a public health crisis by putting too much salt in their products. They refuse to stop doing this. The restaurant industry refuses to educate consumers that their products are high in sodium. Congress bends over backwards to accomodate the industry. Public education campaigns have no chance against the advertising might of the food industry.

What option does that leave, pray tell?

At the end of the day "nanny state" is a meaningless bit of political propoganda hauled out virtually whenever government proposes to value the safety of the public over profit rights of industry. The term is itself bewildering, as at the end of the day, what is government if not a nanny? If policing our neighborhoods, housing our criminals, educating our children, paving and plowing our roads, defending our borders, and providing relief in times of disaster are not inherently protective (and hence nanny-like) functions, then what exactly would qualify? At what point has ensuring the safety of its citizens not been within the mission of our government?

But if the term "nanny" must be used pejoratively, let me draw a distinction. Government requiring that Campbell's send less salt into your kitchen and Macdonald's put less on your fries is not nannying; government taking the salt shaker out of your kitchen and off your table is. And if government refuses to address a situation which private industry is concurrently failing to address, then somebody sooner or later has to file a lawsuit compelling it to do so. I believe it should be an option of last resort, when other avenues of recourse have failed. That standard looks suspiciously close to being met here. Labels have been measuring sodium in foods for 22 years. There has been a steady increase in that time. People will continue to be free to add as much salt as they want to offset any reductions caused by regulation. I think this lawsuit might just have some merit; I am interested to see if the judge does.