@DarkScribe Too much fat is bad too, but eliminating it would be detrimental. If you were to hazard a guess, what percentage of people would you guess would be harmed vs. helped by a salt reduction? I’d like to stress I’m only saying reduce it down to sane levels of roughly 100% the daily recommended value. I get your point that people seeing gov’t regulation of it could give the wrong impression, but my guess is that education could counter it. It’s kind of like alcohol: some makes life better, too much makes it worse.
@bobbinhood Before we became an obese, diabetic, gluttonous, hypertensive nation, I would completely agree with your position. However, we were given the choice to moderate our diet, and we indulged ourselves too much. Now we’re kind of gross and unhealthy. In general I don’t want the gov’t to interfere with my choices, but I don’t really put this in the same category as, say, censorship. This boils down to our philosophies on the ideal role of government. The gov’t must correct for externalities, like pollution, and I see reducing salt as a measure to improve health and reduce long term costs.
You are correct that stating “100% of the daily value” is too vague. Perhaps one reasonable method would be to begin by noting the fact that people don’t eat just 1 serving of something. Generally a restaurant is going to put maybe 3 servings on your plate, and obviously people usually finish it. So if one serving had 20% of salt, which seems normal, now that individual just had 60% daily limit. Perhaps in the beginning, we would say “OK, let’s make the whole plate 20–30% the daily limit.” Really, the problem is the processed foods just have way too much. There is no question people will continue to consume them for convenience, so we can just make them less salty.