I firmly believe that the best things in life are sugar, salt, and fat. Sugar is the gas that makes your body run, salt is an essential mineral without which you'd keel over, and fat...well, fat just tastes good. Salt gets a bad rap, though. We wince in horror when Emeril tosses a handful of it into his latest recipe, we scold people who eat it straight from the shaker (take my word for it on this one), and we feel potato chip guilt---because we know the lowly potato chip is nothing more than a vehicle for the administration of the forbidden mineral.

But I'll never turn down a potato chip again, because salt is actually completely harmless for the majority of munchers. Earlier this year, JunkScience reported on the federal government's ongoing and groundless Salt Assault. I just spotted the news in their 2004 Junk Science Awards, where the salt assault placed at #9.

Here's the blurb:

In early 2004, a panel of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine urged that the recommended daily allowance of sodium be drastically reduced by almost 40% and that the average American’s actual sodium consumption be slashed by more than 60% -- even though 10 major studies conducted since 1995 have all concluded that lower sodium diets don’t produce health benefits and may pose risks for some. Why the extreme recommendation? Political correctness run amok. Read more...

The PC effect comes in because the munching minority who happen to be slightly more sensitive to dietary salt (and therefore more likely to suffer slight elevations of blood pressure) than the rest of us are (did you guess?) African-Americans.

But because the panel didn’t think that singling out African-Americans was an effective public health strategy, it decided to “overcompensate” and make the recommendation for the general population ¯ thereby shifting the burden to the food industry to reduce salt content in foods. African Americans, then, couldn’t help but eat less salt.

Setting aside for the moment my personal loss of potato chips caused by the decades-long salt superstition, I think the panel's approach was counterproductive. Singling out African-Americans would be the more effective strategy. People are more likely to listen to a message that's directed to them. I never really believed the salt hype, but if someone had told me that Luso-Americans (Portuguese Americans) in particular had an issue with salt, I would have been more likely to take them seriously.

I could go on, but I'm going to go make some malassadas (Portuguese fried dough) instead.