It’s Salt’s Fault

The news cycle is constantly changing, but there’s one topic that’s remained in the cycle for some time now:  the high cost of health care.

It all revolves around whether or not the governments should get involved in the health insurance business.  Ask a Democrat, and they want to see a single-payer system (the government pays); ask a Republican, and they say the single-payers system will only increase taxes, drive private insurance companies out of business and force doctors to ration care because of the increased demand.

While the sides duel over what should be done, no one outside of the health community is focusing on the source of the problem.  And in my mind, the source is poor nutrition.  If nutrition improved, I think you’d see costs dramatically decrease over time because fewer people would need treatment.

That’s why the government needs to start mandating some things that restaurants must do to improve health.

As I wrote in a piece this past May, officials from my home state of New York are spearheading an effort to get restaurants and food manufacturers to scale back the amount of sodium used in their signature dishes.  Thankfully, some of them have cooperated, not wanting to contribute any further to the 850,000 deaths happening each year due to stroke and heart attack (high blood pressure is the leading risk factor for heart attack and stroke.  Diets high in salt leads to high blood pressure).

But that’s just the thing—it’s been some restaurants and food manufacturers, not many.  And many is what’s needed for national health organizations to have any chance of meeting their 10-year goal, which is to cut the use and abuse of salt in half by 2019.

That’s why it may be in the best interest of our own health, not to mention that of the nation’s financial health, to require restaurants and food companies to cut back on sodium.

Look, I’m generally not a big government guy.  While I am a Democrat, I generally think that people ought to be free to make their own choices and that government shouldn’t get involved in private company matters.  But there aren’t enough restaurants volunteering to cut back on sodium, so more aggressive measures need to be taken.

Our neighbors north of the border are taking salt head-on as well, and a recent study out of the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests that the Canadian government would save approximately $2 billion in health care costs that derive from hypertension if they mandated restaurants to cut back on salt.

The recommended daily amount for salt intake is about 2,300 mg.  But thanks to the food manufacturers and restaurants that are responsible for 80 percent of the total sodium consumed in America, the average American is eating twice that amount.  And to be honest, in my own analysis of people’s dining habits at restaurants (e.g. sprinkling salt on foods already drowning in sodium before they’ve even tasted it), I wouldn’t be surprised if people were eating three times the recommended amount.

Ideally, restaurants would put people’s health before the financial health of their company, but salt makes foods taste better, and they don’t want to ruin the tastiness of a popular dish.  Even when dishes like the Macaroni Grille’s Chicken Portobello contains a whopping 7,300 mg of sodium in a single dish, restaurants don’t want to mess up the “good thing they have going.”

While salt is important for electrolyte balance and nutrient absorption, restaurants and food companies need to stop abusing sodium.  I’m confident that just as the Canadian study found, healthcare costs would drop dramatically over time.

Who would have ever guessed that restaurants could hold the solution to the country’s healthcare crisis?

Sources
nyc.gov
health.msn.com
foodnavigator-usa.com
foodnavigator-usa.com
origin2.foxnews.com
news.bbc.co.uk