Mutually Assured Desalination

posted at 12:27 pm on May 30, 2010 by Legal Insurrection

The NY Times’ headline writer got it wrong, The Hard Sell On Salt, which purported to show how the salt industry was manipulating public opinion and regulations on restricting salt:

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

But read on, and it become clear that it’s really an easy sell.

People love salt. And industry really is just giving people what they want, and how they want it:

Now, the industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.” ….

In recent months, food companies, including Kellogg, have said they were redoubling efforts to reduce salt. But they say they can go only so far, so fast without compromising tastes consumers have come to relish or salt’s ability to preserve food. “We have to earn the consumer’s trust every day,” said George Dowdie, a senior vice president of Campbell Soup. “And if you disappoint the consumer, there is no guarantee they will come back.”

Needless to say, the food police want the government to force food companies to cut back salt in food, as I’ve mentioned before.

I think we need another SALT summit, where industry, consumers and the government can negotiate a salt reduction treaty, thereby moving us from the currently unacceptable MAS (Mutually Assured Satisfaction) to MAD (Mutually Assured Desalination) in our lifetimes.

No longer should we have to live with the Salt of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Repeat after me: No Más MAS! No Más MAS! Drive us MAD! Drive us MAD!

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

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