The Wall Street Journal
February 25, 2005
PAGE ONE

Seasonal Adjustment Despite Big Health Concerns, Food Industry Can't Shake
Salt
Scientists Struggle to Find An Acceptable Substitute; Diners Are Hooked, Too
Regulation Is on the Table

By SARAH ELLISON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 25, 2005; Page A1

Prompted by health advocates, the U.S. food industry has tried for years to
cut back on its use of salt. An early effort was Mrs. Dash, a salt-free
seasoning made of dried onion, garlic, lemon rind and spices. Introduced in
1982 by Alberto-Culver Co., it enjoyed brief success, but its popularity
ebbed in the 1990s.

"The joke always was: 'It's pretty good, but would be better with just a
pinch of salt,' " says Tony Grenis, who used to work in product development
for Mrs. Dash.

Today, despite 20 years of warnings about the links between salt and high
blood pressure, Americans on average eat about 3,400 milligrams of sodium a
day, the equivalent of a teaspoon and a half of salt. That's up from 2,400
milligrams in the 1970s. An essential part of packaged and restaurant food,
and deeply ingrained in the mass-production process, salt has become one of
the hardest ingredients to drive out of the American diet.

The story behind how the food industry became addicted to salt is one of
imperfect food science, stubborn consumer tastes and deft political
lobbying.

Salt is inexpensive. It fixes problems in imperfect products and extends the
shelf life of packaged food. It makes ingredients taste better, depressing
bitterness and enhancing sweetness. Salt keeps bread from going stale. It
keeps overcooked vegetables from turning gray. It keeps hot-dog meat from
falling apart.

"It's like asking to come up with a replacement for water because we want
something that's not quite so wet," says Clint Brooks, head of research and
development at International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., a company that
develops flavors for the food industry.

Chart:
http://tinyurl.com/5okhy
[More Than a Pinch]

There are signs salt is moving back to the top of the health agenda. The
Center for Science in the Public Interest, a frequent food-industry critic,
yesterday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
alleging government inaction on salt reduction. It wants the FDA to regulate
salt more aggressively. Kathleen Quinn, an FDA spokeswoman, says the agency
doesn't comment on pending litigation.

The regulatory environment has become tougher as countries such as Britain
and France adopt more stringent rules. That's kicked off a major lobbying
effort in the U.S. The prospect of a renewed anti-salt campaign is one of
the food industry's greatest fears.

In one push last spring, the Salt Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based
salt-producers' association, joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in suing
the Department of Health and Human Services in federal court. The suit
alleged that government scientists were advising Americans to eat less salt
without enough evidence. The court dismissed the suit on technical grounds.
Last month, the Salt Institute appealed the decision.

Until modern geology made mining easy, salt was a precious substance. Four
different salts were used to mummify bodies in Ancient Egypt. Roman soldiers
received payments in salt, which they called a salarium, hence the modern
term salary. Repealing the salt tax was one goal of the 1789 French
revolution. Napoleon restored the tax when he became emperor to pay for
foreign wars and it lasted until 1945.

The development of modern drilling techniques in the 20th century made salt
an inexpensive commodity. With it, food makers developed the world's most
efficient system for the mass production of packaged foods. Canning and food
preservation became particularly dependent on salt.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, health experts started to sound warning
bells. In 1982, the then-FDA commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, warned
Americans they were eating too much. Beside him as a prop was an 111Ž2-pound
pyramid of salt.

Most medical experts agree that eating too much salt is a primary cause of
high blood pressure. Others in turn note the connection between high blood
pressure and heart disease. There is still lingering controversy about how
closely these two phenomena can be tied together, or, in other words, to
what extent salt directly contributes to heart disease.

Despite the warnings -- the latest of which came last month -- average per
capita salt consumption in the U.S. has largely continued to rise, although
it has stabilized recently.

The salt people eat is baked into food, not sprinkled on top at the table.
Americans get only about one-twentieth of their salt from the shaker.
Three-quarters comes from processed and restaurant food, which also includes
everyday foodstuffs such as bread, cheese, ham, tomato products and milk,
which contains salt naturally, according to a recent study in the Journal of
the American Dietetic Association.

"Most people aren't choosing to eat foods high in salt," says Jeffrey
Cutler, director of clinical studies for the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute's division of epidemiology. "They are just picking up the foods
that are available to them." The NHLBI is part of the government's National
Institutes of Health.

It is possible to change people's taste for salt. Gary Beauchamp, a
scientist who researches human taste perceptions, discovered in the 1980s
that consumers' "bliss point," or the "just right" amount of salt, could be
lowered if they followed a strict low-sodium diet. In such a test, which
lasted five months, college students saw their average sodium consumption
fall about 40%.

But a few years later, Dr. Beauchamp did another experiment showing how much
easier it is to raise a person's desire for salt than lower it. He handed
another set of college students salt shakers filled with 12 grams of salt,
roughly twice what an American adult consumes in a day, and told them to
liberally season sandwiches, meat, bread and entrees such as pasta and
salads. After a month, the participants' "bliss point" rose, faster than it
had fallen during the sodium-lowering experiment.

"It's easier for people to eat more salt than less," says Dr. Beauchamp. He
is now director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a group funded by
industry grants and the NIH that studies human sensory perception.

The food industry experienced this firsthand. Following government warnings,
it churned out a range of low-sodium goods. In 1990, 14% of food product
launches were low sodium, according to Marketing Intelligence Services, a
research firm that tracks product launches. But the products rarely sold
well as food companies struggled to find workable salt substitutes.

Morton International Inc., a division of Rohm & Haas Co., one of the
nation's best-known salt producers, had been trying to come up with
low-sodium salt since 1970. That year, the company introduced Morton Salt
Substitute, followed three years later by Morton Lite Salt, both of which
replaced some sodium chloride with potassium chloride. But potassium
chloride can be bitter and many consumers rejected it, choosing taste over
the perceived health benefits.

"We knew we weren't coming up with perfect solutions," says Linda Kragt,
technical services manager at Morton, "but the demand was very great to put
something on the market." These reduced-sodium products are now used mostly
in nursing homes and hospitals where a low-sodium diet is a medically
necessity.

Some big food companies pulled low-sodium products from the market. Kraft
Foods Inc. scrapped "Healthy Favorites" low-sodium cheese in 1994, two years
after its launch. General Mills Inc. offered a reduced-sodium version of its
Hamburger Helper seasoning with 25% less sodium than its regular version.
Despite a costly advertising campaign, the company decided the product was a
dud after 12 weeks and stopped production shortly afterward. Last year,
Campbell Soup Co. discontinued its lowest-salt "Healthy Request" soup. Sales
of Campbell's other low-sodium "Healthy Request" products are below where
they were in 1995.

Most of these products failed, according to company representatives, because
they simply didn't taste good. George Dowdy, vice president of research and
development for Campbell's soups and sauces, says consumers wanted a
low-sodium soup with more salt. He also says after removing salt, it's hard
to stop vegetables turning mushy and losing some of their color.

The industry seemed to give up as new food fads, including low-fat and
low-carbohydrate products, crowded out salt concerns. Last year, the food
industry introduced 541 low-sodium products, half the number launched in
1991 when the low-sodium craze peaked, and less than 4% of all product
launches. By contrast, low-carb launches made up nearly 20% of the 2004
total.

Taste isn't the only reason food companies have struggled to cut back the
salt. The need to preserve products for a long time so they can be shipped
to the far reaches of the country is another. In the U.K. last year, Kraft
cut 30% of the salt from Lunchables snack meals, which contain Oscar Mayer
meat and Kraft cheese. The British government has been pressuring companies
to reduce sodium. Such a reformulation wasn't introduced in the U.S. because
it would have shaved the product's shelf life to 70 days from 90. Kraft says
it needs the extra time to ship inventory to supermarkets.

Instead, in the U.S., Kraft cut salt out of the "base cake" of the cracker
included in its ham-and-cheese Lunchables. To compensate for any loss in
taste, Kraft sprinkled a smaller amount of salt on top. The shelf life
stayed constant, and the salt content was cut by 9%, but the same product in
the U.K. has nearly a third less sodium.

Kraft says until recently it had focused on other health concerns. "We have
been looking at total fat and saturated fat and total calories first in that
product," says Nancy Daigler, a Kraft spokeswoman. Now, Kraft says it's
turning its attention to sodium, but instead of making deep cuts in a few
products, it plans to make small reductions across a broad range.

Last year, the food industry was especially concerned about the U.S.
government's Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the body charged with
developing a new set of food rules. The panel was considering cutting the
recommended daily salt intake to 1,500 milligrams from the 2,400-milligram
level previously advocated by the FDA.

In a September presentation to the dietary-guidelines committee, the food
industry's main lobby group, Grocery Manufacturers of America, warned that
food scientists still hadn't come up with salt replacements accepted by the
public and probably wouldn't be able to do so in the near future. Alison
Kretser, director of scientific and nutrition policy at the GMA, told the
committee: "The result [of the industry's salt-reduction effort] was a
relatively small number of products with significant reductions, but with no
discernible impact on overall sodium consumption by the population as a
whole."

The food industry also argued that salt is so ingrained in the
mass-production process that consumers would starve themselves of other
nutrients if they cut their salt intake to the levels suggested by some
health practitioners.

In January, the committee rejected the most stringent option it had
considered in favor of a 2,300 milligram-a-day cap, virtually unchanged from
the previous level. "You could practically hear the industry exhale," says
Gilbert Leveille, the retired head of food technology at Cargill Inc., a
major salt producer.

Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a
member of the committee, explained the decision in an interview: "Because of
the extraordinarily low number of low-salt processed foods in the food
supply, the committee worried that no one would be able to follow the lower
guideline."


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...463733,00.html

sufaud wrote:
> The Wall Street Journal
> February 25, 2005
> PAGE ONE
>
> Seasonal Adjustment Despite Big Health Concerns, Food Industry Can't Shake
> Salt
> Scientists Struggle to Find An Acceptable Substitute; Diners Are Hooked, Too
> Regulation Is on the Table

[...]

> URL for this article:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...463733,00.html

Summary: Cook your own food from fresh ingredients, and don't
raise your own blood pressure about seasoning with salt.

It's trivial to infer from this article that too much salt use
occurs from too much processed/pre-prepared food.

Convenience foods are high in salt and make you crave more
salt in your diet.

Buy, cook and eat fresh food (and wine, of course) and you
won't have to worry.

Bet the Health Facists won't tell us that. Instead, they'll
once again try to tell us how to eat like they do. We all
end up dead anyway.

Perhaps Hunter had it right, afterall.

Dana

Dana H. Myers wrote:
> sufaud wrote:
>
>> The Wall Street Journal
>> February 25, 2005 PAGE ONE
>> Seasonal Adjustment Despite Big Health Concerns, Food Industry
>> Can't Shake
>> Salt
>> Scientists Struggle to Find An Acceptable Substitute; Diners Are
>> Hooked, Too
>> Regulation Is on the Table
>
>
> [...]
>
>> URL for this article:
>> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...463733,00.html
>
>
> Summary: Cook your own food from fresh ingredients, and don't
> raise your own blood pressure about seasoning with salt.
>
> It's trivial to infer from this article that too much salt use
> occurs from too much processed/pre-prepared food.
>
> Convenience foods are high in salt and make you crave more
> salt in your diet.
>
> Buy, cook and eat fresh food (and wine, of course) and you
> won't have to worry.
>
> Bet the Health Facists won't tell us that. Instead, they'll
> once again try to tell us how to eat like they do. We all
> end up dead anyway.

And we should keep in mind that there's a very active debate among
hypertension researchers as to whether salt intake is the principal
cause of high blood pressure. While there have been several very
extensive studies that support the role of sodium (salt) in raising
blood pressure, there are a number of equally compelling studies that
suggest that a lack of calcium and/or magnesium in the diet (typical
sources are green vegetables and dairy) may be a more important factor.
Of course, fast food diets are also typically low in green vegetables,
so your larger point is still a good one, Dana.

Mark Lipton