Is salt bad for your health? Should everyone cut back? Does it
pose a risk only for people with high blood pressure? Should
policymakers regulate the amount of salt in our food? Do we have
the evidence we need to support such actions? Will we ever have
it? Debate has raged over these questions since the late 1960s.
In a new review of half century of studies, recommendations,
meta-analyses, federal policies, and reports in the popular
press, Mailman School professors Ronald Bayer, PhD and Sandro
Galea, MD, DrPH, along with Sociomedical Sciences doctoral
student and journalist David Johns serve up a provocative new
analysis of the case, such as it is, for reducing dietary salt.
They also raise fresh and urgent questions about how to
formulate policy when scientific evidence is ambiguous and
contested. The article is published in the December issue of
Health Affairs. See abstract. Some key moments in the salt
debate: “What’s striking about the salt debate,” write the
authors, “is that the combatants cannot be ne