Medical Experts Call for FDA Action on Salt

Decades of Inaction Lead to Thousands of Deaths Yearly

Salt Assault
• Lawsuit Accuses Denny's of Sodium Overload
• Pass The Salt--But Not Too Much
• Denny's Hit With Lawsuit Over Alleged Unsafe Sodium Levels
• Sodium Levels Still High in Processed Foods
• How Much Sodium Is Too Much? It Depends
• Study: Kids Getting Too Much Sodium
• Nutrition Journal Hid Contributors' Ties to Food Industry
• Medical Experts Call for FDA Action on Salt
• Group Petitions FDA to Limit Salt in Processed Foods
• "Salt Assault" Aggravates America's Health Woes
• Salt Kills 150,000 a Year, CSPI Charges

Two dozen leading hypertension experts, physicians, and health groups are urging Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt to swing his agency into action to reduce Americans' salt consumption.
The high salt levels in countless processed foods and restaurant foods are a major factor in raising Americans' blood pressure, which in turn is a major contributor to heart disease and stroke. Blacks are disproportionately at risk for high blood pressure, those experts said.
"There is virtual unanimity within the scientific community regarding the contribution of excessive sodium consumption to cardiovascular disease," the experts write, pointing to various government-funded recommendations, including those of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the Institute of Medicine, and the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC-7).
In 2004, Dr. Claude Lenfant, then the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, estimated that 150,000 lives could be saved each year if sodium levels in packaged and restaurant foods were halved.

Read more: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/salt_attack.html#ixzz0hZhUWPFq