Dietary Guidelines may reduce allowance for salt and sodium Jennifer LaRue Huget
Thursday, November 4, 2010; PG15
How much is 1,500 mg of sodium?
If a federal advisory committee has its way, it will be the recommended daily amount adults should consume, down from 2,300, when the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 are updated in December. Put in real-food terms, it could mean: Cheerios with skim milk and orange juice for breakfast (about 300 mg), two pieces of whole-grain white Wonder Bread with peanut butter and plain yogurt (about 600 mg) and a healthful entree for dinner (about 600 mg).
Sound appetizing? Not so much. But if cutting sodium makes sense to you (and your doctor), there are easy ways to do so without sacrificing flavor.
The recommendation to gradually move toward consuming 1,500 mg of sodium a day (about two-thirds of a teaspoon's worth of salt) is part of an effort to lower the incidence of cardiovascular disease. The average daily consumption has most recently been estimated at more than twice that: 3,436 mg to 3,712 mg per day. Consuming less sodium can lower an individual's blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States.
That logic is widely embraced; the American Heart Association is among the many health organizations that agree that lowering sodium consumption would benefit public health. "Any change down would be a change in the right direction," says Ralph Sacco, president of the American Heart Association.
But just how can you "change down" without resigning yourself to a bland diet? Here are some ideas:
Experiment with herbs, garlic and onions, and other low-sodium seasonings.
Ease up if you tend to add salt at the table. Though keep in mind that table and cooking salt account for only a small fraction, 5 to 10 percent, of our total sodium intake.
Consider eating more potassium-rich foods such as baked potatoes, bananas, cantaloupe and cooked dark green vegetables such as spinach. Potassium plays a big role in maintaining health blood pressure; you should consume about 4,700 mg daily.
Be aware that your desire for salt will likely diminish within a few weeks after you cut back. That taste is apparently not inborn in humans.
Cook more meals at home. This is the biggest change you can make. Substitute less-processed, more "whole" foods in place of processed, packaged foods and restaurant meals. About three-quarters of our sodium comes from such foods, a reality that suggests that much of the sodium-reduction work has to be done with food manufacturers and restaurants, not so much with individuals.
Not everyone agrees that cutting back salt will result in a healthier nation. Some experts, and, naturally, members of the salt industry, question whether there's enough evidence linking sodium reduction to better cardiovascular health. In a critique of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's report published in the October issue of the journal Nutrition, the authors -- a group that includes Morton Satin, director of technical and regulatory affairs at the Alexandria-based Salt Institute -- argue that the proposed sodium guideline, like others before it, isn't sufficiently rooted in solid science to be implemented nationwide.
Others say that the more important contributor to the rise in cardiovascular disease is simply over-consumption of food, salty or not, and the obesity epidemic. That was the conclusion of a study co-written by Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and published in the November American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It found that our sodium consumption hasn't changed much in recent decades, even as incidence of cardiovascular disease has continued to rise.
Here's the thing about the Dietary Guidelines: They're important, but not mandatory, and you're free to follow or ignore them as you please. Their reissue every five years is a good opportunity, though, to review the way you eat and decide, maybe with your doctor, what you might do differently. Even if that means taking them with a tiny grain of salt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110106078.html
Is 1,500 mg of sodium a realistic goal?
By Jennifer LaRue Huget
I grew up in a salt-loving family. We salted everything: tomatoes, melon slices, any food on our plate - before we even tasted it to see if it really needed more salt. One of my early vivid memories is of getting a McDonald's hamburger and fries and pouring a packet of salt on each before drizzling ketchup over the fries.
I'm the only one of my family members who has (so far, at least) avoided high blood pressure. Though I sometimes crave a salty treat, I don't seek salt out, and I never add it to anything I eat, save for the occasional bowl of popcorn.
But as I write in this week's "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column, I think even I might be hard-pressed to cut my sodium intake to the level that's likely to be recommended in the upcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010, to be issued in December. If that document adopts the recommendation of the advisory committee whose findings largely inform the final guidelines, Americans will be urged to gradually reduce their sodium intake from the more than 3,000 mg we now consume, on average, to just 1,500 mg daily, well below the 2,300 mg that the current (2005) guidelines allow.
Even if you don't add salt at the stove or the table, it's hard to keep your sodium intake that low. Packaged and processed foods and restaurant meals are by far our biggest sources of sodium; even skim milk delivers a dose. You'd have to cook practically everything you eat from scratch to stay within 1,500 mg a day. The advisory committee recognizes this difficulty and notes that much of the sodium-reduction work ahead must be done by food manufacturers.
As for the McDonald's meal of my youth, here's what the current nutrition data says about its sodium content: A plain McDonald's burger has 520 mg; add cheese and the new total is 750 mg. A small serving of fries has 160 mg; a medium has 270 mg, and a large has 350. A package of ketchup adds 110 mg; one salt packet contains 270 mg.
So that little meal of mine would have added up to at least 1,330 mg of sodium.
That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.
Do you think you could get by on just 1,500 mg of sodium a day? Check the nutrition facts for the foods you typically eat. I think you might be in for a surprise.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/11/is_1500_mg_of_sodium_a_realist.html?sid=ST2010110204277I thought I understood salt. My knowledge wasn't enough to fill an encyclopedia but could be summed up thusly: Use it sparingly for taste. And then I talked with Mark Bitterman, who blogs about salt and also sells it through the Meadow in Portland, Ore., and everything I knew went out the window. Mark told me most of the salt in my cupboard should, too.
I had Morton's table salt and kosher salt and two large boxes of La Baleine sea salt. Mark, who owns the Meadow with his wife, Jennifer, suggested I throw them all out. His reasoning was simple: “These are all industrial salts, whether they are solution-mined from salt deposits or evaporated from the San Francisco Bay," he said. "They are refined into more or less pure sodium chloride, processed into the desired crystal shape, [often] treated with any number of chemicals and then packaged for various markets. If you are not interested in highly processed, industrially manufactured foods, you should not use them, ever.”
While sea salt may seem natural, Mark called La Baleine "unnecessarily refined to a standard of industrial purity not needed in table salt." He said the company makes 800,000 tons a year of solar-evaporated sea salt.
While I know that many salts are highly processed, his strong reaction got a strong reaction back. I use kosher salt a lot, and think of it as refined more than other salts and purer. I like that it is relatively less salty and that the bigger crystals help me control what I use, more so than fine table salt. (“Kosher” here does not refer to the acceptability of the salt but to the way it is used in koshering meats.) As far as my research goes, kosher salt is obtained from the sea and does not contain additives. Mark disagrees: “I think if squeeze-tube margarine is your butter, hot dogs are your meat, and spray-whiz nacho sauce is your cheese, then I suppose kosher can be your salt. Otherwise, reach for a natural salt.”
While I agree with using natural salt, I still believe kosher salt is the lesser evil of all the industrial salts available.
We moved on to a topic I have been wanting to learn about: artisanal salts.
Mark is the author of the upcoming "Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most
Essential Mineral, With Recipes" (Ten Speed Press), and he talked about how salt is the oldest culinary product on the face of the earth, produced by man for 12,000 years. Every civilization, every culture, every group, and virtually every region over the last dozen millennia has produced or sourced salt. Each one of those salts was the unique reflection of a geography, climate, economy, technology and cuisine. Hundreds of thousands of salts are lost to time. A few thousand remain.
The key to taking advantage of various salts, he said, is to think: What effect do I want the salt to have on my food, and how can I use the salt most effectively to achieve that effect? Baking, grilling, roasting, boiling, brining, curing and, of course, sprinkling salt on food right before serving (finishing): All can call for a different salt. That said, one nice natural salt can fit many of those uses, he advised.
So what salt does he use instead of regular old table salt? “I use sel gris. Think of sel gris as a whole food: it contains 84 trace minerals occurring naturally in the sea, has irregular, chunky crystals and plenty of residual moisture that lends each crystal a supple crunch.”
There are great sels gris (gray salts) from around the world; some are sweet, and others are briny, most notably those from the ancient Celtic saltmaking regions on the French Atlantic coast. It is also a good finishing salt for hearty foods like steak or roast vegetables. “For 12 bucks for a 2.5-pound bag, you basically get a year’s supply of one of the world’s most premium ingredients,” he said.
Most of the wilder-looking salts out there are best used as finishing salts. Besides sel gris, the other basic types include fleur de sel (flower of salt), traditional, flake and rock, among others. Mark sent me samples of his four favorite types. I tasted each and found that each has a different level of saltiness, so experimenting is required to see how each of these work with different types of dishes. Mark had a suggestion: Try each one with popcorn and see how the taste differs.
- Pangasinan Star is a fleur de sel with sweet, almost brambly, warm flavors and a slightly billowy granular crystal. Perfect for daily use on such things as toast with unsalted butter, stir-fried veggies, grilled fish and chicken curry.
- Marlborough Flaky has a fringed flake crystal and a crisp, clean taste that makes it ideal for salads and fresh or steamed vegetables. It also may be the best salt on the face of the earth for margarita rims.
- The Meadow Sel Gris is mild and incredibly balanced but with huge crystals that yield between your teeth. I've been using it as an all-around cooking salt: ground up in baking, whole on grilled foods, dissolved in water for cooking pasta and blanching vegetables, for preserved lemons, and more. I also use it as a finishing salt on roast poultry and root vegetables, steak, lamb, and for salt crusts.
- Iburi Jio Cherry is an incredible smoked salt, with impossibly fine crystals and a rich, bacony aroma and flavor. Frankly, I can't imagine what it wouldn't be good on. It’s pricey, but potent; think of it like vanilla or saffron, except that you can eat it on anything from popcorn to ice cream, from a tuna melt to salmon sashimi, from burgers to foie gras.
Obviously, my mindset on salt has changed. Now, it's this: Use kosher, use natural, use artisanal, use sparingly, and don't forget that there is almost no life to a dish without salt.
-- Monica Bhide
Gambas a la Plancha (Shrimp Cooked on a Griddle)
4 appetizer servings
This recipe uses salt for both flavoring the food and as a cooking medium.
Serve the shrimp as part of a tapas selection.
Adapted from "Made in Spain," by Jose Andres (Clarkson Potter, 2008).
1 pound kosher salt
16 medium heads-on shrimp
Spread the salt on a flat griddle or in a medium skillet. Place over medium-high heat.
When the salt is hot, lay half of the shrimp on it. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Turn the shrimp over and cook for 2 minutes on the second side. The shrimp shells will be pink and the flesh should be opaque.
Transfer the shrimp to a serving platter; repeat with the remaining shrimp. (Some of the salt will stick to the shrimp.) Serve immediately. (Discard the bed of salt.)
By The Food Section | March 5, 2010; 7:00 AM ET
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/all-we-can-eat/i-spice/i-spice-salt.html?sid=ST2010110204277
Whoever most wants to be in charge is usually the least suitable to do it.
Life is so very very short for ordinary people to have to put up with the fanatical, vulgar and self demeaning cravings of some for power.
Depressing isn't it?
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-west-democracy)
I try to avoid the depressing part - not that it isn't though. otherwise, on point commentary.