Food

[ysabetwordsmith]

A quiet change in everyday foods could save thousands of lives

Tiny, invisible cuts in salt could quietly prevent heart attacks and strokes.

Lowering salt in everyday foods could quietly save lives. Researchers found that modest sodium reductions in bread, packaged foods, and takeout meals could significantly reduce heart disease and stroke rates in France and the U.K. The key advantage is that people would not need to alter their eating habits at all. Small changes to the food supply could deliver large, long-term health benefits.


This is one of those cases where it seems like a good idea at the time, but is not. You have to ask: Why is all that salt there in the first place? Two purposes: 1) It preserves food. 2) It belongs to a category of ingredients -- along with sugar, fat, artificial colors, etc. -- that covers up how terrible most mass-produced and especially ultraprocessed food is.


So if you lower the salt, then:

* Commercial foods with lower salt will spoil faster unless other, possibly even worse, preservatives or processes replace them. If shoppers have negative experiences with foods that spoil too soon, or dislike the substitutes, they will quit buying those products.

* If the bad flavor of commercial foods is not covered up well enough, again including people disliking the substitutions, they will quit buying those foods and also throw a massive fit in public. This has already happened a number of times when the government tried to manipulate the food contents in various ways.

That leads to exactly the kind of changes in eating habits that the would supposedly be avoided, because people won't eat things they don't like, and many a product has disappeared after changing its formula only to be rejected by shoppers.  Plus of course there is the issue that not everyone has the kinds of problems that require them to reduce salt, and some people need lots of salt -- which is to say, anyone sweating buckets due to exercise or going outdoors in global warming.


I agree that lowering excess salt content in food is an excellent goal. So how about we stop subsidizing bad things, like sugar, and move that money to healthy things like fresh fruits and vegetables, or even frozen things with no added salt, sugar, preservatives, etc. instead. Another excellent category would be dried legumes, since the canned ones tend to contain copious salt. One area that would be useful to ban would be meat packing companies that sell products with "up to 10% saline solution" -- that is, charging the customer meat prices for salt water.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

There is a lot of high blood pressure in my family so I have a fixed habit of not using a lot of salt when I cook, I use herbs and garlic and spices instead. (I will sometimes eat salty chips and nuts though.)

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Sensible.

My body has a very narrow salt tolerance. Too much will make my bones itch very quickly. But if I go outside and sweat, I come in wanting salt.

I have to be careful cooking. Most things only need a pinch to perform the duties of carrying flavor and activating things like baking powder. I rinse canned beans. I get lower sodium versions when available. Any recipe with a salty ingredient like bacon does not get other salt added. I despise advice such as "salt like the sea." If you do that, the food will taste like the sea. :P

Re: Thoughts

[greghousesgf]

I also like making homemade soup, it's much easier to control salt intake that way. Most canned soups have way too much salt in them. They do admittedly take much longer to make but it's worth it IMHO.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I favor crockpot cooking. Dump it in, ignore until done. :D

Our current favorite is "Butternut Squash Soup with Apples and Onions."

Reducing salt

[dialecticdreamer]

Where the reduction would be most useful to me is in canned goods. Right now, "low sodium" versions of canned tomatoes, corn, etc., are more expensive than their default. Changing the law in the US, the way that both Canada and Australia did, would make the price gouging actionable.

Specifically for canned veg, the amount of salt used can be cut in half safely, and because the canned foods are generally ingredients, there's still room for people to salt it at the table. I can't take salt OUT of a commercial can of chili.

Reducing the salt in compounded recipes, like chili or soups, is less likely, because those ARE supposed to be heat and eat. So, I avoid those, and am likely to do so even if the laws change.

Salt in an item like a turkey should be handled differently than in hot dogs or bratwurst, et al. One is a simple item, USUALLY a single ingredient, and that "saline solution" nonsense should NEVER have been allowed. Cutting the salt in hot dogs and other sausages would be LOVELY, but again, it's unlikely.

Spoilage... not an issue in canned goods, nor in properly refrigerated or frozen turkeys. Spoilage after someone opens the package of bologna should NOT be a risk if the food is refrigerated and it is consumed within a week. Would people scream if eggs spoiled in a week? That's NORMAL. Irradiating them to gain three or four extra days in the fridge is the unnatural path.

Re: Reducing salt

[greghousesgf]

I'm not Jewish but I prefer kosher hot dogs anyway because they use a better quality meat and taste better.

Re: Reducing salt

[dialecticdreamer]

There's a particular brand of cheap hot dogs which taste too salty, BUT they're the only ones that get the right amount of cloves in the mixture. I try not to eat them more than once a year now.

I've had kosher hot dogs, and they are Definitely a different type of sausage than the mixed meat hot dogs.

Re: Reducing salt

[ysabetwordsmith]

I agree that kosher hotdogs are superior.

Re: Reducing salt

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Right now, "low sodium" versions of canned tomatoes, corn, etc., are more expensive than their default. Changing the law in the US, the way that both Canada and Australia did, would make the price gouging actionable.<<

That would be nice.

>> Specifically for canned veg, the amount of salt used can be cut in half safely <<

I've found some lower-sodium versions that are good, but others that are awful. You have to do a lot more trial-and-error to find ones you like, then hope they don't disappear.

>> One is a simple item, USUALLY a single ingredient, and that "saline solution" nonsense should NEVER have been allowed. <<

If only.

>> Cutting the salt in hot dogs and other sausages would be LOVELY, but again, it's unlikely.<<

If you cut the curing salt in a sausage recipe, you have to recalculate whether it is safe, which can't be done at home.

>>Spoilage... not an issue in canned goods,<<

I've had plenty of cans bloat on me. I've also had cans, typically of fruit with syrup, get lost in a cabinet and empty their contents slowly onto the shelf. So yes, spoilage is a thing in canned goods.

>> nor in properly refrigerated or frozen turkeys. <<

Agreed.

>> Would people scream if eggs spoiled in a week? That's NORMAL. Irradiating them to gain three or four extra days in the fridge is the unnatural path.<<

You don't have to irradiate them. Unwashed eggs will last surprisingly long on the counter. They're not legal to sell in America because Americans are stupid, but people who keep chickens know that trick -- it's a staple of off-grid living. Even washed eggs typically last a month or more. They have to: hens only lay about 1 a day at maximum, but collect a clutch of 6-12 before sitting on them. The eggs are designed to hold state.

Re: Reducing salt

[dialecticdreamer]

Canned goods-- the new guidelines for commercial canning say to use it within two years, because seals can degrade over longer periods of time.

So, "spoilage within the shelf life is unlikely" is what I should have said.

The ridiculous thing is that the guidelines for HOME canning often specify "use within 12 months," which discourages people from canning their own produce.

[fred_mouse]

Regardless of the health aspects, I would be in favour of less salt in some of the prepared / processed foods. Because a lot of food I buy is too salty, in ways I can't do anything about. When salt is used externally for preservation (say, salted fish) there are methods for getting rid of that much salt. But if I buy a shelf stable curry-inna-box, the salt is not the main preservation method, and distracts. However, I think that sits in your 'better quality ingredients' situation, in that these are good quality, they are just too salty for me.

Salt

[dialecticdreamer]

There's a trick of putting half a potato into something that you've accidentally oversalted and cook for several minutes before tasting.

If I took the time to do that for a can of veggie soup, well, it's a huge hassle, and it would be EASiER simply to make the soup from scratch.

Re: Salt

[ysabetwordsmith]

Also commercial soup is often terrible nowadays. I had to give up on the entire category of canned "cream of something soup" because it now has the texture and flavor of glue. :P I did find a powdered cream of mushroom that is useful, but it's not the same. And all the healthier versions of canned ones? They are cream of garlic. Also :P for me.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I also find that many commercial foods are too salty for me to eat. However, this has led to me trying many low-salt and no-salt-added versions. Some are excellent. Many are terrible. It's not an easy ingredient to omit or even reduce.

Re: Thoughts

[dialecticdreamer]

One problem is that human palates adapt to high salt and high sugar foods FAST, and they become the baseline for later comparisons. Seeing changes in palate within a large group will take ten or fifteen years to be both measurable and consistent.

So, half a generation from now, the conversation will include people who aren't vegan or vegetarian who have never tasted cow's milk, and find it too salty when they do.