NY Times: Throwing the Book at Salt

Today's New York Times had a great article on the efforts of the New York City government to control salt in foods - something that FDA has been disinterested in and ineffective at. The articles starts,

"Dr. Thomas R. Friedan invited some of the biggest names in food processing to lunch last October. Grilled salmon and green salad were on the menu, but the subject was salt.

After a string of victories over smoking, trans fats and calories, Dr. Frieden, the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a new campaign: to lower the amount of sodium America eats."

The gist of Dr. Friedan's efforts are then stated:

"When the food company executives had finished lunch, Dr. Frieden made his pitch: Over the next five years, identify the foods that are contributing the most sodium to people’s diets and cut the level of salt by 25 percent. In a decade, cut it by another 25 percent. And do it in unison with your competitors.

If they refuse?

“If there’s not progress in a few years, we’ll have to consider other options, like legislation,” he said in an interview last week."

The article points out that men are consuming 48 percent more salt than they did in the early 1970s, and women, 69 percent more, so the trend is now in the wrong direction.

In an attached graphic, linked to picture at left, the Times highlights foods where a single serving has a significant amount of the recommended daily salt for healthy people. It is particularly interesting that Kashi Heart to Heart Waffles get special attention. In the Hall of Shame section of the companion website, lowsaltlowfat.com , we have been pointing out for months that the rest of Kashi's "Heart to Heart" product line is actively promoted as a low salt and low fat heart healthy product line. When we first "promoted" this product to the "Hall of Shame" the Kashi website even called the waffles "low salt" as shown in the image from the website at the time:

Kashi did remove the "low sodium" after I pointed it out to them but never acknowledged in writing their error and continues to sell the product with nearly identical labeling with the rest of the Heart to Heart product line - which is actively promoted as being low in both salt and fat.

Now Kashi is really a good source of LS/LF products especially for breakfast cereals. Indeed, you may well find out that the majority of low salt cereals in your supermarket are from Kashi. But their misleading labeling of the high sodium waffles with nearly identical packaging with a LS/LF product line is unethical and borders on the illegal. While the Bush FDA and FTC refused to address this issue, hopefully the new leadership at FDA and FTC will.

Meanwhile we suggest you contact Kashi (and their corporate masters at Kellogg's) and tell them they are doing a great job on many of their products but it is time to either get the salt out of the waffles or relabel them clearly.