Our society is awash in consumer watchdogs, all of them blowing their horns at full volume as they portend doom and gloom caused by our intemperate consumption of this and that. Chocolate. Sugar. Salt. Booze. Cholesterol. Triglycerides. Red meat. Dairy. Eggs. I could go on, but the list is by now mind-numblingly long and woefully familiar. According to the alarmists, we are drowning in a sea of harm. Our refrigerators are chilly agents of death; our supermarkets, killing fields.
But a lot of those warnings are based on sloppy data and selective interpretation. Confirmation bias looms. Recently one of most sacred of the food-nanny bugaboos is under fire: salt. Yes, good old salt, the stuff that animals in the wild seek and we humans in our suburbs supposedly overconsume to the point of crisis. 1500 milligrams a day, no more! cry the nannies, fingers wagging, tongues clucking, lips pursed. That’s really not much salt; about a teaspoon or so. You’d think it would be good for you; salt is, after all, a vital component for health. Never forget that early Star Trek episode with the icky alien that sucked the salt right out of people—redshirts first, of course—and was eventually brought down by Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock. Salt or no, the critter was not immune to a phaser at maximum setting.
But, no. Apparently salt is the work of satan. Just look at it funny and you drop dead on the spot.
Except you don’t. What’s more, a recent study has been finding that people get sicker, not healthier, when they let their salt consumption drop down below 2,000 or so milligrams a day. Admittedly the samples are small, so the researchers are not trumpeting their findings as universal panaceas, nor are they making ironclad recommendation. To their credit, they are limiting their statements to a recommendation that the whole salt thing needs to be re-examined.
Nevertheless, that was enough to send the nannies into gibbering fits of screaming denial. Über-nanny The Center for Science in the Public Interest (I question their science, I don’t think they’re particularly public, and I do not find them interesting) has gone into compensatory overdrive. Oh, those nasty researchers are wrong wrong wrong!! they shriek. Only WE have the true answer, which is that SALT IS EVIL and you MUST NOT EAT TOO MUCH SALT and in fact the only food we’re willing to recommend without qualms is steamed broccoli. Eat steamed broccoli and we’ll get off your backs, OK? But don’t put any salt on it, you hear? Because then we’ll start screaming again.
I have grown weary beyond imagination with the posturing of the food critics, nannies, and finger-wagging purveyors of culinary doom. Yes, a lot of us are fat. We’re living in abundant times. Food plays a less conspicuous role for many people these days. Long family dinners vanished with Mom’s becoming a senior exec at Chevron while the two kids pursue after-school lives that would have caused nervous breakdowns in earlier generations. Everybody’s zooming around, so carefully-cooked meals assembled from seasonal and local ingredients have become the provenance of the very rich, who are more likely to dine out at any of the gadzillion restaurants available these days. So other folks prepare meals and sell them. Some of their stuff is very good. Some of it is awful. Most of it is just middling. But it’s there, it’s convenient, it’s not particularly expensive, and it stays out of everybody’s way.
I don’t expect the nannies to go away any time soon, but I really wish they would keep their bony fingers out of the legislative process. That’s the problem with them: like Bible-thumping fundamentalists, they want their narrow and intolerant worldview made law. How inconsiderate of them. Haven’t they ever heard of caveat emptor? We make our choices, and it is the nature of a free society that not all choices are equally wise. There’s a world of difference between suggesting alternative choices, and lobbying to make those choices law.
At any rate, the whole salt thing just might be less dire than they say. Yet another monumental health hazard just might turn out to be a mirage. Consider eggs; they’ve mostly out from under their black clouds. Various cuts of meat are always coming in for whacks, but veal chops don’t appear to be vanishing any time soon. Even booze, that perennial whipping boy, has been acquiring a faint patina of healthiness given the evidence that a drink a day just might keep the doctor away.
Perhaps a bit of détente is in order here. To the food nannies: OK, I will eat a stalk of steamed, unsalted broccoli with my dinner. But I intend to wash it down with a shot of top-grade rye whiskey.