Peppering the debate on salt

Re “The War on Salt Goes Corporate,” May 17, you missed the saltiest of all: fried chicken. Also, we always laugh when the Food Network chef says “a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper” — every few minutes!

John Albritton

Laguna Beach

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That article on salt may be the best one written for The Times all year. I’m also dismayed by the “serving size” on packaged foods, which is always smaller than an average person’s serving, further misleading the consumer as to how much sodium they are actually getting.

And no doubt some people think products with “sea salt” may be better for them. My personal jaw-dropper is a local upscale market that sells a pre-wrapped turkey avocado club “all natural” sandwich with 2,490 milligrams of sodium.

Larry Ballard

Carpinteria

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So far, no one has published any scientific work that has shown, for a person with normal metabolism, that normal excess salt intake does any harm at all. The body regulates the amount of salt in it that is needed for normal function under prevailing conditions and gets rid of the rest, which is why we urinate.

We do know though that the addition of both sugar and salt has a beneficial effect on the taste of the food we shove down.

The urban myths about both salt and sugar really need to be discarded as foolishness. Obesity is caused by eating too much. People of discernment who eat in restaurants have noted that the plates and their contents get larger as we have become a more sedentary society. Too many calories in and fewer out make us fat — and that will still occur even if we reduce salt and sugar intake to the minimum needed to sustain life.

Ellis Glazier

La Paz, Mexico

Raw milk benefits

If journalists are going to state facts about raw milk, then those facts should be put in the appropriate context. However, the May 17 article “Milk in the Raw: ‘Rights’ and Risk” quotes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s outbreaks of human infections caused by the consumption of raw milk as if they are obvious evidence against consumption.

According to this article, “From 1998 to 2008, 85 outbreaks of human infections resulting from consumption of raw milk were reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention causing 1,614 illnesses, 187 hospitalizations and two deaths.” The paragraph dramatically ends with the word “death,” but these numbers are taken egregiously out of context.

The following quote from an article on the CDC website was easy to find and comes from the same governing source:

“We estimate that food-borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year.”

And remember, those numbers are estimates for a single year. If we want to compare those numbers to the numbers of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths attributed to raw milk in this article, we will have to multiply by 10.

That means the CDC estimates that between 1998 and 2008, food-borne diseases caused 760,000,000 illnesses, 3,250,000 hospitalizations and 50,000 deaths. Of those 760,000,000 illnesses, 1,614 were caused by raw milk. Of those 3,250,000 hospitalizations, 187 were caused by raw milk. And of those approximate 50,000 deaths over 10 years, two of them were caused by raw milk.

To blithely quote statistics from the CDC is both obtuse and subversive. If you look at these numbers in context, raw milk would seem to be one of the safer food products in America, not one of the most dangerous. I wonder why the FDA and public health experts don’t warn against chicken, for example. In 2002 alone, one outbreak from bad chicken caused seven deaths.

And what about spinach — why doesn’t the FDA warn against spinach, which killed three people in 2006 alone?

And what about that Sizzler Restaurant in Milwaukee? A young girl died of E. coli after eating there, and that was in one year!

The real truth is that approximately 5,000 people die from the food they eat each year, and only 0.2 of them die from raw milk. I think the FDA should be warning people about a lot of things, but I think raw milk is the least of our worries.

Wanda Shapiro

Los Angeles

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The FDA bases its policymaking on a war against bacteria, a battle plan issued 80 years ago when we did not understand how our bodies, and, in particular, our immune systems work. We have since discovered that the human immune system is composed primarily (at least 80%) of a protective biodiversity of bacteria living in the human gut. Instead of working toward balance and strength of this system, ancient FDA policies seek annihilation by promoting dead milk, sterile foods and the use of antibiotics.

Like it or not, raw milk is a high-priority health food. Well-educated people such as myself know that milk produced in organic grass-fed conditions is a staple for good health. In its raw state it is digestible because it retains its enzymes. We must stop thinking that we can kill bacteria and can stay well. Our immune systems depend on biodiversity and the wholeness of our foods.

Eric Remensperger

Santa Monica

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