To Salt, or Not to Salt

I have been thinking about how to respond to all of the recent calls to reduce salt consumption across the board. It has become the "hot" cause of the so-called food police as they trumpet recent health studies about the disastrous consequences of high blood pressure brought on by heavy salt consumption. Solutions include forcing food companies to reduce salt content in all processed foods, which they claim is the main culprit due to salt “hidden” in foods no one would ever suspect.
All of this is taking on the characteristics of a crusade before all the evidence is in on the impact of current salt consumption and, perhaps more important, on the health impact of a sudden reduction of salt consumption. To me, this is reminiscent of the "get the fat out" craze of the 1990s and the "carbs are bad" campaign of the 2000s, both of which took off prematurely, before all the facts were in, and for which our industry got two very large black-eyes.
I started to write a blog on the subject over the past weekend, but was not pleased with my efforts. Then, this morning, John Tierney of The New York Times came to my rescue with his article in the science section of today's edition: "When It Comes to Salt, No Rights or Wrongs. Yet." It lays out the issue better than I ever could.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a balanced and dispassionate analysis of this hot button issue.