Food Nannies Won't Be Stopped By Shoddy Science

Kevin Glass | Jul 21, 2013

Salt has become one of the largest crusades for food paternalists, joining trans fats and high fructose corn syrup as supposed causes for concern. The Food and Drug Administration has begun to look at regulating the amount of salt in "processed" foods, and they're being cheered on by progressives.

ThinkProgress' health reporter Sy Mukherjee asked "why can't the FDA do more to crack down on these additives?", and lamented that foods generally recognized as safe cannot be so easily controlled by regulatory fiat. Media Matters noted the "positive effects" from diets with reduced salt and said that those who disagreed with FDA regulations are waging a "war on health."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a leading food paternalist group, calls salt "probably the single most harmful substance in the food supply."

Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control recommends a daily salt intake of 2,300 mg when Americans consume on average over 3,400 mg. Some studies have shown that reducing the salt in one's diet can lead to better health outcomes. Now, the CDC asked the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies to review the available academic literature.

The findings won't be welcome to food paternalists. ....To Read More.....

My Take – There is only one kind of science that is shoddy to the activists; those that disagree with their views.  A number of years ago they spent millions of dollars on a breast cancer study involving the residents of Long Island.  The results?  It was found that in spite of the large about of agricultural chemicals used over the years there was no difference in breast cancer rates of Long Island residents than the rest of the country that couldn’t be explained by ethnicity.  In other words; some groups have a slightly, naturally occurring, higher rate of cancer than others.  And that was it.  Good news – right?   The response from the green movement wasn’t all happiness and joy.  They demanded more studies. 

Let’s also understand this.  If they could find one study that agreed with them they would tout it for all eternity, even if everyone else in the world knew was based on weak associations, or even outright fraud.  Let’s also understand this.  These activists aren’t about what is good for humanity.  They are about what’s good for them, and they use our own sense of decency against us.   

So how is a person to know what's right? Simple! If the green movement, in all its manifestations, supports it - it’s probably a lie. If the food activists demand it - it's probably a lie. If it's based on some government central planning scheme with all the decisions being made by a small elite bunch of bureaucrats, whose only experience in life has been college and government, it's probably stupid and a lie.  If those decisions are being made by activists who have now become ensconced in positions of power; it’s almost assured to be stupid, a lie and treason.