Dear Food Industry: Lower the Salt, Save Lives
Dr. Black: What do you think we should do in the United States?
Dr. MacGregor: You ought to look at what the United Kingdom has done and formulate your own program based on some of the lessons we have learned. To some extent, New York has done that. Mayor Bloomberg and others set up a salt-reduction program, but it has not been very successful because the food industry did not get behind it.
There is a lot of opposition in the United States from the Salt Institute and various consultants who work for them to oppose this. They have been quite successful, rather like the tobacco industry, in stopping action.
You need to get a powerful organization of doctors who believe that salt is important to block the opposition, because no one is opposing the Salt Institute. The medical hierarchy is not answering back as it has done with tobacco.
It's rather sad, because nothing is happening about salt in the United States, and yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is helping to carry out salt-reduction programs in China. Why on earth is the United States helping other countries to carry out salt-reduction programs and not doing it itself?
Dr. Black: We could look at it one of 2 ways. One is that we have to be patient. It took 25 years to identify tobacco, and cigarettes especially, as being a problem before we actually saw smoking rates go down.
But we shouldn't be patient about this with the media and our ability to reach people with their fear of having a stroke. We could prevent a fair number of these strokes, and that fact could have a lot of traction. But we can't lose heart. We have to keep going.
Dr. MacGregor: I am certainly very impatient. Most countries are formulating plans to reduce salt, and it's sad to see the United States being some way behind that. That doesn't mean that you can't get on with it. The evidence is overwhelming.
You need to get organized and get the media involved, because as we have shown in the United Kingdom, the industry doesn't lose out. Once they realize that they are not going to lose sales, they are prepared to do it. It is good for them. In the end, we tell the food industry bosses that if you reduce the salt, people will live longer; you will have more consumers, and you will be able to make more profit.
Dr. Black: People will be eating that low-salt soup much longer.
Dr. MacGregor: It will be much more enjoyable. People say, "Food without salt is so awful." But I can tell you -- and I'm sure you know from your own experience -- if you don't eat a lot of salt, food with less salt in it is so much more enjoyable to eat than the heavily salt-laden food from the processed food industry, and all these fast foods that are inedible and disgusting.
Dr. Black: There are many other ways to make food tasty.
Thank you very much for your time. I hope you keep on this; it's been a very exciting experience for me to watch how successful you have been, and I hope we can be successful here as well. Thank you.
Would It Work in America?
Dr. Black: What do you think we should do in the United States?
Dr. MacGregor: You ought to look at what the United Kingdom has done and formulate your own program based on some of the lessons we have learned. To some extent, New York has done that. Mayor Bloomberg and others set up a salt-reduction program, but it has not been very successful because the food industry did not get behind it.
There is a lot of opposition in the United States from the Salt Institute and various consultants who work for them to oppose this. They have been quite successful, rather like the tobacco industry, in stopping action.
You need to get a powerful organization of doctors who believe that salt is important to block the opposition, because no one is opposing the Salt Institute. The medical hierarchy is not answering back as it has done with tobacco.
It's rather sad, because nothing is happening about salt in the United States, and yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is helping to carry out salt-reduction programs in China. Why on earth is the United States helping other countries to carry out salt-reduction programs and not doing it itself?
Dr. Black: We could look at it one of 2 ways. One is that we have to be patient. It took 25 years to identify tobacco, and cigarettes especially, as being a problem before we actually saw smoking rates go down.
But we shouldn't be patient about this with the media and our ability to reach people with their fear of having a stroke. We could prevent a fair number of these strokes, and that fact could have a lot of traction. But we can't lose heart. We have to keep going.
Dr. MacGregor: I am certainly very impatient. Most countries are formulating plans to reduce salt, and it's sad to see the United States being some way behind that. That doesn't mean that you can't get on with it. The evidence is overwhelming.
You need to get organized and get the media involved, because as we have shown in the United Kingdom, the industry doesn't lose out. Once they realize that they are not going to lose sales, they are prepared to do it. It is good for them. In the end, we tell the food industry bosses that if you reduce the salt, people will live longer; you will have more consumers, and you will be able to make more profit.
Dr. Black: People will be eating that low-salt soup much longer.
Dr. MacGregor: It will be much more enjoyable. People say, "Food without salt is so awful." But I can tell you -- and I'm sure you know from your own experience -- if you don't eat a lot of salt, food with less salt in it is so much more enjoyable to eat than the heavily salt-laden food from the processed food industry, and all these fast foods that are inedible and disgusting.
Dr. Black: There are many other ways to make food tasty.
Thank you very much for your time. I hope you keep on this; it's been a very exciting experience for me to watch how successful you have been, and I hope we can be successful here as well. Thank you.
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