Anyone in NY like salt?

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smae1980
smae1980 Posts: 794 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I have been reading that there is a proposed bill for all of New York State banning all use of salt by chefs in restaurants. There would be salt on the tables for diners to add at their own liking, but any chef caught adding salt could face a $1,000 fine. That is utter BULL!!! Now I know I could get beat down for saying this on a fitness site, but here me out. First, salt is an essential nutrient, meaning we need it in our diet and our bodies don't make it. I realize sodium deficiency has never been an issue for this population, on the contrary our country suffers from a multitude of ailments and diseases directly linked to salt, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. This is not because we eat salt, it's because we eat WAY TOO MUCH salt. I think focusing on fast food restaurants and national chain restaurants who's main ingredients are prepackaged processed foods, with extremely high sodium content, would be better than cracking down on the entire food industry. Some foods just don't taste as good without salt, and many baked goods require salt to activate the leavening agent. Who wants flat cake, or maybe that won't be an issue because they might decide to ban sugar next. Cooking with salt enhances a food's flavor ( not too much salt), but salting your food at the table just makes it taste salty because the salt doesn't have the time to blend with the flavor of the dish. Now I did read that one chain restaurant had a popular dish that contained 7300 mg of salt which is excessive disgusting and unnecissary, but also proves the point I made about regulating the larger chains. Maybe setting limits on the amount of salt allowed in a single dish, or requiring restaurants to disclose to diners amounts of salt in their food upon request, similar to fast food chains being required to disclose nutrition info. would be a more practical and acceptable law to consider, but as is I think there are just going to be a lot of pissed off New Yorkers, both diners and chefs!!!

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  • newnormal2010
    newnormal2010 Posts: 61
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    This is crazy! In fact, it's so crazy that I didn't believe it. But I googled it and there's the story! :noway: I don't live in NY, but I live at the very north edge of PA, and most of the time if I go out for more than pizza, it's to a restaurant in NY.

    As you said, there are many foods that simply cannot be prepared properly without some salt -- baked goods, especially. I remember the time my Mom made her special dinner rolls and accidentally left out the salt. They were terrible! So terrible that I clearly remember this event that happened something like 25 years ago!

    Perhaps a coalition of chefs need to prepare a selection of sodium-free foods and serve them to the legislature!

    For the record, I don't use much salt at home. A typical round box of salt will last my family several years. But there are some things that need salt, and there's nothing wrong with that. As much as I think Americans (in general) need to make major changes to how we eat, I don't think that legislating those changes is the way to go. That just encourages people to avoid taking personal responsibility for their health decisions.
  • smae1980
    smae1980 Posts: 794 Member
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    Perhaps a coalition of chefs need to prepare a selection of sodium-free foods and serve them to the legislature!

    that is a great idea!!! One newspare quote I read said if you want salt free food eat in a hospital! Hospital food is BLAH!!!
  • questionablemethods
    questionablemethods Posts: 2,174 Member
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    This would be a sad sad day for chefs in New York. I love to cook and salt -- just a small amount -- enhances the flavor of everything! (Ever try it with dark chocolate? Delicious.) I have a few acquaintances I know who claim to not even have salt in their kitchen. Claim to never cook with it. My response? "Then you don't cook." Maybe that's snobby of me, but seriously! I doubt anyone is having blood pressure problems because of a pinch of salt added in good homemade food!
  • questionablemethods
    questionablemethods Posts: 2,174 Member
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    As you said, there are many foods that simply cannot be prepared properly without some salt -- baked goods, especially. I remember the time my Mom made her special dinner rolls and accidentally left out the salt. They were terrible! So terrible that I clearly remember this event that happened something like 25 years ago!

    Exactly! Once I was making hummus, which I have made a hundred times before, but for some reason it just didn't taste good. Kept trying to adjust it. A little more lemon juice? No. A little more garlic? No. A little more tahini? No.... Then it dawned on me! I had forgotten to add any salt. Added a pinch and voila! The flavors came together. I always remember that.
  • steffi1686
    steffi1686 Posts: 119 Member
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    Seems silly to ban the use of salt in restaurants.
    And salt might not be as bad for you as many would think. Check out the abstract to this study (shown below), it summarizes findings related to salt. The study included over 1000 people who were measured over a period of 5 years. Basically high salt intake was associated with all-cause mortality only in people who were overweight. So it would seem that it might be being overweight itself that causes these problems and not salt intake. Also if you think about it overweight people tend to consume more and thus would tend to have a higher intake of sodium. So basically as the study states the effect of sodium and potassium intake on CVD (cardio vascular disease) morbidity and mortality in Western societies remains to be established. Everyone needs to remember that a correlational association between two variables does not equal causation.

    Title: Sodium and potassium intake and risk of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality: the Rotterdam Study
    Author: Geleijnse, Johanna M.
    Witteman, Jacqueline C. M.
    Stijnen, Theo
    Kloos, Margot W.
    Hofman, Albert
    Grobbee, Diederick E.
    Citation: European Journal of Epidemiology NOV 2007 pages: 763-770 volume: 22 issue: 11 Year: 2007
    Abstract: Dietary electrolytes influence blood pressure, but their effect on clinical outcomes remains to be established. We examined sodium and potassium intake in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality in an unselected older population. Methods A case-cohort analysis was performed in the Rotterdam Study among subjects aged 55 years and over, who were followed for 5 years. Baseline urinary samples were analyzed for sodium and potassium in 795 subjects who died, 206 with an incident myocardial infarction and 181 subjects with an incident stroke, and in 1,448 randomly selected subjects. For potassium, dietary data were additionally obtained by food-frequency questionnaire for 78% of the cohort. Results There was no consistent association of urinary sodium, potassium, or sodium/potassium ratio with CVD and all-cause mortality over the range of intakes observed in this population. Dietary potassium estimated by food frequency questionnaire, however, was associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality in subjects initially free of CVD and hypertension (RR = 0.71 per standard deviation increase; 95% confidence interval: 0.51-1.00). We observed a significant positive association between urinary sodium/potassium ratio and all-cause mortality, but only in overweight subjects who were initially free of CVD and hypertension (RR = 1.19 (1.02-1.39) per unit).
    Conclusion: The effect of sodium and potassium intake on CVD morbidity and mortality in Western societies remains to be established.

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