NYC Presses Food Suppliers to Reduce Salt

NYC Presses Food Suppliers to Reduce Salt The Bloomberg administration is continuing to offer up ground breaking wellness initiatives by announcing a push to reduce the salt in foods by 25 percent in the next five years. The initiative, announced yesterday, currently involves encouraging restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily reduce the amount of salt they use. Since encouragement probably isn’t the most effective way to push this agenda, some legislation will likely have to be passed to reach the 25 percent benchmark.

It has been estimated that small decreases in salt intake can lead to decreases in systolic blood pressure. Population-wide, such a reduction would theoretically lead to reduced prevalence of heart attack and stroke, saving thousands of lives per year.

If all goes as planned, it will be interesting to compare blood pressure levels and the incidence of heart attack and stroke in New York City before and after the 25% reduction…

Image by L. Marie

Tags: Bloomberg administration, food manufacturers, heart attack, New York City, stroke

Jennifer Teems, MS, RD, CDN, is a Clinical Dietitian at the Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens (MSHQ), where she provides preventive and therapeutic education to individuals with nutrition-related disease ...read more