No, I don’t mean the SALT treaty–I mean salt–the stuff you have in a shaker on your dinner table.  Haven’t they got better things to do?  Like deal with the Iranian nuclear threat?

Anyway, according to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air yesterday, the government is moving toward creating the crisis that will allow it to regulate the amount of salt used in processed foods.  OK, there is too much salt in some canned soup, but those of us who read labels can avoid buying soup with too much salt, and eventually the companies who manufacture it will make more of the lower salt variety.  That is how the free market works.  However, the free market seems to be temporarily sent out to lunch.

According to the article:

“Officials have not determined the salt limits. In a complicated
undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads
and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and
beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the
government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to
gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be
calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.”

The article further points out:

“High-salt diets may not increase the risk of death, contrary to
long-held medical beliefs, according to investigators from the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

“They reached their conclusion after examining dietary intake among a
nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S. The Einstein
researchers actually observed a significantly increased risk of death
from cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated with lower sodium diets.”

So why in the world is the government doing this?  It seems to me that the government is interfering in an awful lot of different areas of our lives for no apparent reason.  Again, the consumer will naturally buy the products that they feel are healthier, the government does not need to intervene.  If the problem is an uneducated consumer, the answer is to educate the consumer–not more government regulation.