Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Going after salt

The FDA is planning/talking about  issuing new regulations limiting the amount of salt in food.  You gotta wonder about this.  Making rules for salt, or any other rules on food seems to be a legislative job, not a bureaucrat job.  The Germans brag about a medieval law on the purity of beer, still in force in Germany, but a real law, they didn't have bureaucracies in the middle ages.  I think the FDA is stepping beyond it's legal authority.
   And then there are recent scientific studies claiming  that salt ain't all that bad for you.  These are disputed, but then True Believers won't accept any thing that cast doubt upon their beliefs.  Lotta bureaucrats are True Believers. 
   My chemistry is weak, but it is clear that all sorts of biochemistry in your body needs just the right amount of saltiness to work.  The body has mechanisms to maintain the right salt level, one mechanism is appetite, when your salt level is low,  salt tastes better, when your salt level is high, less salt tastes better.  In the service, they issued us salt tablets on hot days when we were sweating hard. 
   One effect of the drive for lower salt, is to sharpen my eye in the store.  Original Recipe Stoned Wheat Thins, taste a helova lot better than Low Sodium Stoned Wheat Thins.  Both come in nearly the same packaging, you gotta look sharp to buy the good tasting ones.  On the other hand, down the canned soup aisle, I find the traditional Campbell's is just too salty for my taste.  The new fangled Healthy Request soup tastes better with about half the salt of Campbell's. 

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