Satin cautions IOM Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium to exercise prudence

 Mort Satin, Director of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the Salt Institute addressed the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium on March 30 at their 2nd Information-Gathering Workshop. He cautioned the Committee to use great caution and to read all the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature before making any recommendation for a population-wide reduction of salt intakes. He stated that "you cannot simply reduce salt - salt has to be replaced or enhanced with something else and once you begin to modify flavor profiles, you embark on an endless journey of adding nuances and counter-nuances to correct off-flavors or dis-functionalities introduced by the previous additive, until you are left with a cocktail of complex industrial chemicals in the final food product. The very concept of replacing salt with an arsenal of synthetic chemical that have never been tested for their interactions and toxicities at the levels they are projected to be consumed at, if they replace salt, is highly questionable. It is no different than replacing animal fats with trans fats or cane sugar with the several unpronounceable industrial chemicals we call sugar replacers today. All these chemical replacers distort the consumer's perspective and promote greater overall consumption of food. Sooner or later, a fuller understanding of their toxicities will be revealed, and it is this Committee that will have to bear the responsibility for the ill-conceived strategy that prompted their widespread adoption."

You can read the full statement here.