New York City Aims to Cut Salt Intake
In a city with hotdog carts on every street corner, cutting salt is going to be a lot of work. Good thing New York City never sleeps.
Earlier this month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced an initiative to cut salt intake to help lower the city's high blood pressure.
Every year, 23,000 New Yorkers drop dead due to hypertension leading to heart attack or stroke; costing billions in healthcare expenses.
The joint goal of the New York City Health Department and The National Salt Reduction Initiative--a collection of cities, states, and other health departments--is to reduce salt consumption in restaurant foods by 25%, over five years.
Once the details are hammered out, the initiative will set up two and four year targets for various food categories, specific to that food.
New York's Health Department says the recommended daily limit for salt is 1,500 mg for adults, but foods like deli-meat contain that much in one serving.
It won't be easy. New York City is renowned for lox and bagels, street cart hot pretzels, open-faced pastrami, and then dirty martinis at night.
Via Reuters.
You know what would work even better than reducing salt? Increasing physical activity.
I eat all the salt I please (though no heavily processed foods) and have no problems with hypertension even though it runs in my family and I'm the only one who doesn't...
ReplySalt doesn't give EVERYONE hypertension. Like Heather said, some people are not that sensitive to it because they lead active lifestyles. I myself do not restrict my sodium intake, but then again, I am very active and I don't eat a lot of processed foods.
ReplyI agree, however any initiative that brings awareness and focus on a healthier lifestyle is a good thing! Hopefully it helps to make people stop and think before they eat.
ReplyI think that what keeps coming up as THE ogre in all the literature are processed foods. And the most deadly combo of all seems to be an excess of salt and sugar combined with a dose of transfats. When I was researching 'Mom, Pass the Broccol' I found it scary that children as young as 4 who eat a diet of mainly processed foods, are now getting kidney stones.
Replygooooooood
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