Salt Wars
The workshop for school food service workers (discover.cook.nourish; part of the CPPW grant) has an accompanying workbook with about 33 recipes in it. A group of volunteer master’s in nutrition students from Bastyr University calculated a nutritional profile for each recipe as well as a retail cost per serving. Seemed like good information to add. But honestly, I was nervous about the sodium content for a couple of the recipes – like Vegetable and Chicken Teriyaki.
Salt no more you will eat!
The fear comes from the battles being fought against salt (sodium chloride) in food. The new USDA food guidelines recommend that children and people over 50 should consume 1500 mg or less daily. Why? Because 70% of the American population is at risk for high blood pressure and hypertension is correlated with high salt intake. Americans currently eat about 3,400 mg of sodium daily. It is important to note that 70- 80% of that sodium intake comes from packaged food and restaurant food.
This guideline puts a real crimp in the typical school lunch which relies heavily on processed foods to keep costs low (see “Please Don’t Condition my Dough“). No picnic for the makers of packaged food either. Salt is a low cost way to create taste and texture when your base ingredients have none. If food manufacturers had to replace salt (lower the sodium content) they would have to resort to more expensive ingredients and lose profits. Higher food costs are not an option for school lunch programs either, who are not generating profits and operate within a very tight budget.
But wait a minute. Hold the no-salt phone. Apparently hypertension has been increasing for years without any change in sodium intake. No kidding. According to a report in Food Navigator, “rising obesity rates may be a more important factor for hypertension than rising sodium consumption” claim the authors of a new study that notes US sodium intake has remained relatively constant over the past 50 years. Then why is the USDA recommending these extremely low amounts of sodium? I don’t know. Is a symptom being addressed rather than the cause (people consuming too much sodium-laden junk food because the ingredients come from subsidized crops so the food is cheap; weight gain from eating these foods cascading into other health problems such as hypertension and diabetes)??? I have so many questions.
Marion Nestle, PhD, feels that the whole salt thing is a consumer choice issue. If you want to keep your sodium intakes lower (and your weight reasonable) don’t buy Cheetos and Coke. In her thread of posts on salt Marion also quotes Judith Shulevitz’s piece in The New Republic, “Is salt the new crack?” Ms. Shulevitz writes:
“We need to stop ingesting all these substances in ludicrous amounts…We need to be taught not just what’s in processed food, but how historically anomalous its manufacture and our consumption of it are. We need to understand the mechanisms that addict us to it. We need to relearn how to prepare real meals, and we need to start rethinking the social dynamics of that chore (it can’t just be up to wives and mothers anymore).”
Yup. Let’s cook. Less than 5% of our sodium intake comes from salt added to foods prepared from scratch at home. That’s why half of the workshop for school service workers is hands-on cooking. That’s one of the many reasons for launching Cookus Interruptus.
Do you worry about salt intake? And if you do, what do you do about keeping sodium intake low? What do you think about the guideline to keep school lunch food under 1500 mg? Will that help?
(from Cynthia)
Tags: hypertension. Marion Nestle, salt, school lunch program, sodium intake, USDA guidelines
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Since I cook almost all of my family’s food I do not worry about salt intake. However, every so often I buy a prepackaged meal for busy week nights (a “just in case” meal). When I buy prepackaged meals I always look at the sodium content and try to find something that isn’t crazy high in sodium. I also look at the ingredients. I don’t know if the guideline will help make school lunches healthier, but at least it’s a small step in the right direction. I think the school lunch issue is so complex. I know at my daughter’s school the food is pretty scary, from a nutritional point of view. What’s really sad is that about 70% of the school is on free or reduced lunch. So basically the kids in the lowest socio-economic class get the worst food, breakfast & lunch, day-in and day-out.
Comment by Sam — February 8, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
I don’t think all people with hypertension are salt sensitive. In my particular case, I am very sensitive to salt. I read labels very carefully and rarely eat prepared food. I enjoy having a good meal out occasionally but I select very carefully. I have found that special requests to leave the salt off are rarely heeded. I think it is just automatic behavior on the part of commercial cooks. The thing I miss most is that special umami flavor that comes from things like soy sauce.
Comment by JOYCE JENSEN — February 8, 2011 @ 3:29 pm
Wow. Thought provoking. I do worry about sodium intake, mostly because heart disease runs through my paternal family (men and women alike) and my husband’s paternal family. We’ve seen, and heard of, many heart attacks in the family, too many of which have ended in fatalities. That being said, I do cook almost every meal we eat, including the granola we eat for breakfast, because, among other reasons, I can control the ingredients that way. That means I also send in my daughter’s lunch, but she’s in a small group of students at her school who do so. I’m not sure if lowering the sodium level of the food at school would help those other students, many of whom I see eating processed junk foods for breakfast, for after school “snacks”, and in the pizza parlor / diner / Chinese food take out place most nights of the week. Then again, it couldn’t hurt.
Comment by Jennifer B. / Brooklyn — February 8, 2011 @ 5:25 pm
Interesting post — I’m not really concerned about it, but I have to admit, I feel sort of guilty putting a little salt on my steak or eggs, or making some massaged kale salad because I am aware that so many people see salt as unhealthy. I will usually cut the salt slightly in any homecooked meal because actually having salt in my hand makes it easy to control (and its just as easy to add more if needed). I agree that the real culprit is the processed foods and not knowing what is in the food and how that can affect your body, and your health. In college, when popular fast foods were right on campus, I remember asking for a burger without the ’salt and pepper’ and it was so gross I seriously doubted it was beef. I’m not sure what 1500 mg of sodium is, but I hope that lowering the sodium in the schools leads to healthier fresh foods that students learn to enjoy rather than bland processed foods that make them crave salty snacks after school.
Comment by Jaclyn — February 8, 2011 @ 8:29 pm
You’ve done a great job of focusing the issues and discussion. However, I’m a skeptic on one point. The research sites U.S. salt consumption remaining constant over the last 50 years, but during that same time period we saw the introduction and rise of the fast food industry, which uses a tremendous amount of salt.
Anyone else think the same?
Comment by Susan Levy — February 9, 2011 @ 8:42 pm
Hi Susan,
“Sodium excretion, a precise reflection of intake, say Adam Bernstein and Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, has not changed in the last half century, despite rising rates of high blood pressure. Instead, they suggest that rising rates of obesity might be the cause.”
You’d think (I would) with the rise in fast food and soda intake that sodium intake would increase. Apparently not.
The accompanying editorial, by David McCarron and his colleagues, takes the argument even further as can be seen just from its title: “Science trumps politics: urinary sodium data challenge US dietary sodium guideline.”
Regardless of whether the correlation between sodium intake and hypertension is accurate or not, the stringent guidelines from the USDA applied to school lunch will leave them confounded. Without sodium laden processed foods to create flavor and with a very tight budget - it will be difficult to make anything tasty.
Comment by Cynthia Lair — February 9, 2011 @ 9:00 pm
It’s interesting that the focus is on salt, a natural product that can not be patented, in processed foods and not the multitude of man made and often difficult to pronounce chemicals. Why is that I wonder? My kids don’t eat school lunches, they are some of the very, very few that take their lunch to school. It is worrisome to think that the type of garbage that they are served is actually encouraged and endorsed by agencies that say they have the best interests of our kids in mind. I completely understand that there are kids that don’t get proper meals at home and think it wonderful that they get a chance at school and that there is a budget but surely there has to be a better way. Maybe the USDA should consult people such as yourself and Bastyr alumni who know a thing or two about eating right.
Comment by Jill — February 10, 2011 @ 10:29 am
I eat very limited processed foods and I dont really like restaurant food (it doesn’t taste as good as homemade food and is more expensive, so I dont see the point). Possibly as a result, I dont worry about salt, whether I believe it is unhealthy or not. I dont actually believe that it is unhealthy, except possibly for a small amount of people who are sensitive to salt. I am now pregnant, and I have been craving salt, I eat sea salt, one piece at a time; I dont know if it is the minerals in sea salt or the salt itself but I find it delicious.
Comment by Juliana — February 10, 2011 @ 8:08 pm
I’ve read that not all salt is created equal: that the minerals in unprocessed sea salt or Himalayan salt provide a built-in balancing factor that protects the body from too much sodium chloride. Yes? (or did I imagine this?) And what about Tamari and Braggs? I also wonder about the importance of iodine being overlooked in the USDA guidelines. Ah… such a balancing act!
Comment by Nancy Nolan — February 11, 2011 @ 12:03 am
I don’t worry about salt intake, but have lowish blood pressure and don’t eat out or packaged foods very often. However, some restaurants now use much less salt, and after all, salt and pepper are on the table. I don’t like black pepper - wish I could convince others that that is something else that can be added at will.
I have a daughter with diabetes - have you ever asked at a restaurant which foods have no sugar added? The answer is very few! Let’s not go hogwild on the low or no sodium intake unless we have a medical reason to do so.
Take your children grocery shopping and have them read the labels with you - for mine it was a good cure for the desire to eat every food fad on the shelf. Some of those additives sound very scary!
Comment by Judith Hance — February 14, 2011 @ 10:16 am