• The New York Times, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 10:37 AM

The salt industry and the food companies it supplies are fighting back hard -- both overtly and behind the scenes -- to combat the message that the ingredient is unhealthy. Food Network star Alton Brown promotes the mineral in video called "Salt 101" as the "finest compound to ever grace our palate" and claims there are more than 14,000 good uses for it, as an example of the visible campaign.

Michael Moss writes that one of the industry's behind-the-scenes tactics is to blame consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods. In a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee that is finishing up recommendations on nutrient issues, Kellogg mentions "the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt." Moss discloses that the industry nominated a majority of the members of the committee and has presented its own research to the group.

The story goes on to detail the ins and outs of health advocates' battles with the industry since the late Seventies, when Center for Science in the Public Interest director Michael F. Jacobson first petitioned the federal government to regulate salt because of growing research linking it to hypertension. But, Moss points out, food with less salt not only tastes very different to our trained palates, but food companies also tend to add sugar to foods whenever they reduce it.

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