Salt is the wound

If it’s State of the Union week, it’s time for lawmakers of both parties to wring their hands about the other side’s unwillingness to work together.

So, let’s go back to the future: 1981 to be precise.  Al Gore was a mere congressman—not yet vice president or Nobel laureate.  Ronald Reagan was president and had as a special assistant a consumer advocate—Virginia Knauer.

{mosads}Both the congressman and president’s special assistant were concerned about the high levels of salt in the American diet and what that meant for our health: increased blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, and kidney damage.

In fact, Gore, as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science and Technology, held two days of hearings in April 1981 on sodium in the nation’s food supply.  The issue of the day: whether food companies should have to disclose sodium levels on product labels so consumers could make informed decisions (this was before the Nutrition Facts label was mandated).

Scientific and medical experts testified on the need to reduce sodium to improve the health of Americans and supported labeling.  The food industry opposed it as burdensome.  Sound familiar?

Knauer argued for letting the marketplace work, but conceded, “Mandatory regulations may become necessary if voluntary and educational efforts prove inadequate, but it’s down the road.”  And, yes, I testified in favor of mandatory regulations.

In fact, support for mandatory labeling was the bipartisan position then.  Legislation calling for sodium labels was introduced in the House and gained the support of 86 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and one independent.  The roster of co-sponsors reads like an across-the-aisle Who’s Who: Al Gore, Henry Waxman, Tom Harkin, Henry Hyde, John Porter, Ron Wyden, Robert Walker, George Miller, Hamilton Fish, Jr., Daniel Lungren, James Leach, Ed Markey, Charles Rangel, Richard Gephardt, Jimmy Quillen, Bill Gray, Dan Glickman, Steny Hoyer, and Paul Simon.

It still took another decade, but eventually the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act passed, and since 1993 the sodium content of food on the Nutrition Facts label is as expected as the sun rising in the east.  And the food industry has not withered away under this regulatory burden.

However, we have not made a dent in the high levels of sodium in our food supply, and salt consumption in the American diet is morbidly high.  This chart tells the story.

As is readily apparent, we are consuming too much salt (the primary source of sodium), and it is costing us an estimated 100,000 premature deaths—and some $20 billion in health-care costs—each year. 

The arguments today are much like the arguments of 1981.  The scientific and medical consensus calls for a reduction of sodium in the food supply, and, in fact, many other nations around the world—from Canada to Turkey—have mandated limits on sodium in key foods or developed voluntary sodium-reduction plans. 

But the American food industry continues to contend that it is doing what’s needed with company-by-company, product-by-product reduction efforts and that any kind of government mandate—or even voluntary target—is too burdensome.  And there is no bipartisan push in Congress to support strong government actions to protect the health of Americans of every political stripe.

Jacobson is executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.