I Guess This Was Why He Wanted A Third Term

Mayor Bloomberg, a.k.a. New York's insufferable nanny, now wants to cut back on salt in processed foods...

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Public health experts say that would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure and should help prevent some of the strokes and heart attacks associated with that condition. The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers.

“We all consume way too much salt, and most of the salt we consume is in the food when we buy it,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner, whose department is leading the effort. Eighty percent of the salt in Americans’ diets comes from packaged or restaurant food. Dr. Farley said reducing salt from those sources would save lives.

Since taking office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who just began his third term, has gained a reputation as an advocate for healthy living, initiating prominent campaigns against smoking and harmful trans fats. To combat obesity, he has campaigned for calorie labeling on restaurant menus and warned consumers about sugary soft drinks.

The city’s salt campaign is in some ways more ambitious and less certain of success than the ones it waged against smoking and obesity. For one thing, the changes it prescribes require cooperation on a national scale, city officials said, because major food companies cannot be expected to alter their products for just the New York market.

And removing salt from many products can be complicated. Salt plays many roles in food, enhancing flavor, preventing spoilage and improving shelf life. It helps bread to rise and brown.

The city’s campaign against salt resembles its push to cut trans fat from restaurant foods, which began with a call for voluntary compliance. When that did not work, the city passed a law to force restaurants to eliminate trans fat.

But city officials said it would be difficult to legislate sodium reduction.

“There’s not an easy regulatory fix,” said Geoffrey Cowley, an associate health commissioner. “You would have to micromanage so many targets for so many different products.”

He said officials hoped the campaign would work through public pressure. Companies that complied would benefit from good publicity.

I know I eat some unhealthy junk, and I also know that I add way too much salt to what I eat. But it's my job to get that under control, not Michael Bloomberg's. And if it is Bloomberg's job, then he's doing really lousy work, so I'd like him fired.

If Bloomberg stops this time with just public encouragement, I don't have a huge problem with it, although if I were a NYC resident, I'd probably prefer my mayor to be doing something other than reading nutrition labels for me. But the problem with these ideas is that they rarely stop with just public encouragement, and at some point, we end up limiting freedom of choice in ways that become far too intrusive (at least for me). Will restaurants later be encouraged to remove salt shakers and salt packets from the tables and other areas, providing them only on request? Perhaps after the consumer is read a lecture about using too much salt?

Yes, slippery slope arguments are inherently weakened by the fact that most of the problems in an individual parade of horribles are inherently absurd ("We're not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!"). But the real question is how far we really want the state to go in regulating our lives for our better good. Even if people are making foolish decisions about their diet, those are their decisions to make. Besides, it's not like our city, state, and federal governments are covering themselves in glory making intelligent decisions right now -- I'd like there to be less on their plate rather than more, in part because I don't want to cede more control to them, and in part so they can actually do the jobs they're supposed to be doing.