FDA Salt Guidance Could Kill More People Than It Saves

Reason.com reports on CEI's comments on the Food and Drug Administration's proposed guidance for sodium in prepared foods. 

The free-market think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has submitted comments that show that the FDA's confident claim that reducing salt consumption by Americans will save lives is at best, a hope, and at worst, tragically wrong. The CEI comments to the FDA nicely summarizes the relevant scientific studies. Here is the nub of the issue:

Reduced sodium consumption affects different individuals in different ways. Only an estimated 17 to 25 percent of the population is "salt sensitive"—they experience higher blood pressure with increased dietary sodium—while 75 percent are considered salt resistant and will experience no change in blood pressure with altered dietary sodium. However, an estimated 11 to 16 percent of the population are inverse salt sensitive, which means reduced dietary sodium can increase their blood pressure. With this heterogeneity in response to salt, trying to force a population-wide reduction in sodium availability in order to reduce incidences of hypertension would be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.

…

CEI correctly argues:

For a minority of the population, reducing dietary sodium can be an effective means of lowering cardiovascular and hypertension risk. But identifying for whom sodium restriction may be beneficial and by how much is something that individuals and their doctors must determine. For the general population, sodium reduction is, by no means, a silver bullet to reducing hypertension and has the potential to increase risks for a large portion of the population.

Treat people as individuals not just as members of an undifferentiated public health herd. Let's hope that the FDA will heed this advice and withdraw its misguided draft guidance.

Read the full article at Reason.com.