Public Health, Salt And Taxes
The Food Nazis want to do with salt what they’re doing with trans-fats. Is it really for Our Own Good?
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed an initiative to pressure the food industry to reduce the salt content. Much like the city’s ban on trans-fats and requiring calorie count postings, the justification is clothed as a public health issue. Not to be outdone, the feds are also looking at this as part of the HIT (Health Information Technology) initiative.
No doubt the state and feds will require reams of paper (signature always required for enforcement) with supporting electronic filings, along with new armies of bureaucrats to administer all of this. Can’t be too careful with the nation’s health.
Never mind that salt’s connection to health in general, and heart disease in particular, is somewhat ambiguously nebulous, and sometimes debated with more passion than demonstrable facts.
Actually, the reason for this is not too difficult to find: Taxes. Taxing salt, like trans-fats and like, at the point of manufacture makes for easy control, and, not least, a rich vein of new government revenue, with the manufacturers taking the hit for the increased costs, not the consumer. Consumers never seem to have to pay for government activity, at least in the opinion of government types.
Long ago, salt was a necessity, a preservative before refrigeration. Governments worked hard to maintain a salt monopoly, along with monopoly prices. These eventually became major problems, leading to riots and the like in seventeenth century Spain and nineteenth century France, among other places.
Making salt a public health issue suggests that the current planners have imagined a way to finesse these ancient mistakes, and that the general public won’t be aware of the consequences. There may be something to that.
A ‘quick poll’ on KeninMD’s site asked if government should regulate diet, with YES, NO, and NO MATTER choices. As of this date, the YES got some 7%, NO got 51%, and NO MATTER got 42%.
The NO MATTER was a bit surprising, suggesting that government action can be ignored or otherwise circumvented. At least the Spaniards and French were somewhat honest: It was all about money and control. Today, cloaking something like this as a health issue somehow gets a pass.
© Copyright 2009 Chuck Brooks for FutureWare SCG
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Tags: food nazis, public health, salt tax