2 N U T R I T I O N A C T I O N H E A LT H L E T T E R ■ J U N E 2 0 1 5

EDITORIAL

Michael F. Jacobson, PhDExecutive Editor

Bonnie Liebman, MSDirector of Nutrition

Stephen B. SchmidtEditor-in-Chief

Jayne Hurley, RD David Schardt

Senior NutritionistsKate SherwoodCulinary Director

Paige Einstein, RDLindsay Moyer, MS, RD Camilla Peterson, MPH

Project CoordinatorsNamita Davis, BScMaria Fisher, RD

Consultants (Toronto)Bill Jeffery, LLB

National Coordinator (Ottawa)Jorge BachArt Director

CIRCULATION MANAGEMENT

Bill Dugan Debra Brink Myriam Pierre Louella Fennell Chris Schmidt Jennifer Green-Holmes Sheila Thomas Brian McMeley Ken Waldmiller

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Norm Campbell, MD University of Calgary

Monique Julien, MSc, DrPH Université de Montréal

Mary McKenna, PhD, RD University of New Brunswick

Andrew Pipe, CM, MD University of Ottawa Heart Institute

Kim Raine, PhD, RD University of AlbertaFrank Sacks, MD

Harvard Medical SchoolNorman Temple, PhD

Athabasca UniversityRegina G. Ziegler, PhD, MPH

U.S. National Cancer InstituteNutrition Action Healthletter (ISSN 0885-7792) is published 10 times a year (monthly except bi-month-ly in Jan./Feb. and Jul./Aug.).

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JUNE 2015Volume 42 Number 5

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Eight years ago on this page we dubbed salt “Public Health

Enemy Number 1.”We were in good com-

pany. Statistics Canada, for example, reckoned that restaurants and food com-panies were pumping twice as much sodium as health

authorities recom-mend into Canadians’ arteries. (Don’t blame the salt shaker; it ac-counts for only around one-tenth of sodium intake.)

An estimated 5,000 to 16,000 Canadians die each year from heart attacks and strokes that are caused by too much sodium. That’s the best argu-ment I can think of for restaurants and food companies to let their customers decide how to salt their own food.

In July of 2010, the federal Minister of Health’s Sodium Working Group—with rep-resentatives from government, industry, uni-versities, and health groups (including us)—unanimously called on companies to trim sodium to targets that the government would set by 2012 or possibly face regulations.

Later that year, current Ontario Deputy Premier Dr. Deb Matthews led all provincial and territorial health ministers in calling for Health Canada to draft binding sodium- reduction regulations in case voluntary salt-cutting failed.

And fail they have, despite Prime Minister Harper’s December 2010 boast that one of the government’s crowning achievements of that year was a plan to set ambitious targets to lower Canadians’ sodium intakes by one-third in six years.

In 2012, Health Canada set those targets...then promptly proceeded to ignore them.

It seems like the federal government wants nothing to do with regulating the food in-dustry. Artery-clogging trans fat? Food dyes?

Advertising to children? Health-sapping school food? Restaurant menus that don’t list calories and sodium? Who cares?

In 2012, NDP MP Libby Davies (Van- couver East) proposed legislation that would have forced companies that didn’t meet Health Canada’s targets to say so on their labels.

Four out of five Canadians support warn-ings on high-sodium foods. Seventy groups

and experts backed Davies’ bill. So did every NDP, Liberal, Bloc, Green, and independent MP. But that wasn’t quite enough to offset near-unanimous Con-servative opposition.

So where does that leave things?

In 2013, we published a follow-up to our 2009 “Salty to a Fault” report. Of the 171 foods that we

tracked in both years, the number meeting Health Canada’s sodium targets rose only slightly, from 60 in 2009 to 81 in 2013. While more than a third of the foods got less salty, only one in seven dropped enough to reach even the first interim target. Dis-tressingly, companies increased sodium in nearly one in seven foods in our survey.

Also, University of Toronto researchers found that the average drop in sodium in restaurant foods between 2010 and 2013 was just 25 milligrams for menu items that averaged nearly 1,000 mg.

Clearly, we can’t count on Ottawa. Maybe the Ontario legislature will come through and approve Bill 45, which would at least require restaurants to disclose calories on their menus.

Meanwhile, sodium continues to take its toll.

Michael F. Jacobson, PhDExecutive DirectorCentre for Science in the Public Interest

M E M O F R O M M F J

Salty Shakedown

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Ottawa doesn’t seem to care how much sodium foods are pumping into our

arteries. Does Queen’s Park?

The next Nutrition Action will be a combined July/August issue. It should be in your mailbox by late July.