With so much emphasis on health care during the current presidential campaign, whoever wins next Tuesday’s election will need to make some speedy decisions about the runaway medical costs occasioned by America’s unhealthy eating habits.
Salt will likely be first in the crosshairs. Pressure has been building for the sodium found mainly in table salt—currently an unrestricted substance “generally reckoned to be safe”—to be regulated as an “additive” subject to legal limits.
Physicians have long linked salt to high blood pressure—a key factor in heart disease and stroke. A 20-year study investigating the role sodium plays in people developing high blood pressure was finally released to the public in 2002. It concluded that a high-sodium diet is a definite risk factor for congestive heart failure in overweight people.
