Salt: The “Forgotten Killer” — The AMA & CSPI Urge Crackdown On the White Powder, But What About The-More-Dangerous Substance, Sugar?

Salt is on the minds lately of the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

But should salt — the so-called “forgotten-killer” — be the prime focus of governmental and medical attention and potential regulation rather than even-more-forgotten-and deadly sugar?

Yes, salt can lead to fatalities, but the other white powder, sugar, and its relatives (other refined sweeteners) can kill way more people than salt.

Let me bring you up to date on salt’s heated debate.

The FDA is considering limiting salt content in processed and restaurant foods, because the white substance is harmful and reportedly prematurely kills 150,000 people each year, as you can learn about in the Los Angeles Times.

More specifically, the “CSPI, backed by several health groups, wants the FDA to beef up
labeling, require manufacturers to cut salt in packaged foods, and revoke salt’s `generally recognized as safe’ [GRAS] status, subjecting it to stricter regulations as a food additive,” as MSNBC reported.

Now, the American Medical Association has joined the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has worked for years to call for government intervention.

The FDA, AMA and CSPI are ganging up on salt, because too much sodium has been linked in scientific studies to high blood pressure, which, of course, is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

The AMA’s Stephen Havas, M.D., M.P.H., M.S. (vice president for the organization’s Science, Quality, and Public Health division) even publicly worried that “most Americans consume two to three times the amount of sodium that is healthy, with an estimated 75 to 80 percent of the daily intake of sodium coming from processed and restaurant foods.”

Dr. Havas even relied on a vivid analogy to describe salt’s health hazards:

“The deaths attributed to excess salt consumption represent a huge toll – the equivalent of a jumbo jet with more than 400 passengers crashing every day of the year, year after year.”

“I am sure no one would tolerate so many deaths from airline crashes, so why
tolerate it from food?” Dr. Havas added.

While I applaud calling for a crackdown on salt in processed foods and restaurant meals, why zero in only on the “forgotten killer” salt when sugar poses much greater danger?

Way more than 150,000 are dying each year due to their excess sugar consumption, as my book SUGAR SHOCK! reveals.

We’re not just talking about one jumbo jet with 400 passengers crashing. Instead, the numbers are much more astronomical.

Sugar’s dangers amount to a sky filled with thousands of jumbo jets crashing! In fact, it’s tough to fathom just how many jets.

Just look at some of the millions of people, whose sugar overloading and subsequent sugar shock may hurtle them towards disease and premature death.

• 191 million overweight or obese adult Americans (or about 65 percent of all Americans). These people, especially the 31 percent, who are obese, are prone to devastating consequences and a host of deadly diseases.
• Nearly 21 million (20.8 million people) with diabetes, in particular the 90 to 95 percent of people with type 2 diabetes, which is largely preventable by diet (kicking sugar and refined carbs), exercise and other lifestyle changes. It’s imperative for these millions of people properly manage their blood sugar, which can swing wildly by over-consuming sweets and refined carbs. Some complications of diabetes include increased risk of fatal heart disease, stroke and kidney failure. (Not taking care of the disease also could lead to nerve damage (neuropathy), blindness (retinopathy), erectile dysfunction, depression and amputation.)
• 54 million people with pre-diabetes, who are headed towards diabetes and possibly early death if they don’t make lifestyle improvements such as cutting back on sugar intake. (Some estimates are that between even more people — up to 95 million Americans — have pre-diabetic conditions such as metabolic syndrome, also known as Syndrome X and insulin resistance syndrome.)

And those above figures don’t include the more than 40 million
American adults with anxiety and 12 million with depressive disorders,
as well as roughly 142 million Americans with symptoms of hypoglycemia.
(I’m not adding these groups, because their sugar habit tends
to diminish their quality of life, leading to less fatal symptoms.
However, some of these people have been known to commit suicide because they’re
feeling so miserable, helpless and hopeless.)

Clearly, millions of lives are cut short just by eating over-eating sugar, which the majority of Americans do.

So, with salt taking the limelight, I just feel compelled to point out that sugar could be much more deadly for more people.

Even so, it is helpful to be told how much salt to consume. For instance, the American
Heart Association recommends limiting daily sodium intake to less than 2,300
milligrams a day, or one teaspoon, but most of us consume about 3,300 milligrams
instead. (The L.A. Times says the dreaded figure is 4,000
milligrams.)

 

Now, look at the outrageously high figures for sugar consumption.

 

• The average American gets about 25 percent of their calories from sweets and
  desserts, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages, as one study found.
• The typical U.S. adult consumes between 3/4 of a cup of sugar to nearly 1
  cup of sugar a day. That’s  a far cry from the 2.2 teaspoons each person
  consumed in 1801, according to historians.