The other night, after consuming two microwavable White Castle
cheeseburgers, I started to agonize. One serving contains not
only adequate taste but also 600 milligrams of sodium -- 25
percent of the government's suggested daily allotment -- leaving
me with only 1800 milligrams to spare for the remaining 21 hours
of the day. Following the government's nutritional advice, as I
discovered after a few minutes of trying to do so, is
debilitating.

This may have been my "castle," but every kitchen is the
government's home.

Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
unveiled the National Salt Reduction Initiative, a set of
"voluntary" guidelines to cut the amount of sodium in processed
and restaurant foods by 20 percent over the next five years. At a
press conference, Bloomberg
said, "We're trying to extend the lives and improve the lives
of people who live in this city."

As he sees it, the best way to do that is to eat 40 percent
less sodium in cereals and canned vegetables, 25 percent less
sodium in processed cheese, 30 percent less sodium in popcorn,
and 25 percent less sodium in peanut butter and hot dogs. In
order to make 308 million lives worth living, a mayor is telling
a country how to consume grilled cheeses and frankfurters.

Though the guidelines are officially voluntary, they may
not stay that way. "If there's not progress in a few years, we'll
have to consider other options, like legislation," the city's
former health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, said.

Some lawmakers already are. On March 5, New York State
Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced
legislation that would "prohibit restaurants from using salt
when preparing customers' meals." A restaurant would be fined
$1,000 each time a chef cooked with salt.

This is the latest case of salt hysteria. In 1976, the
president of Tufts University said
salt was "the most dangerous food additive of all." According to
the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), salt
is
"perhaps the deadliest ingredient in the food supply." Bloomberg
recently
compared salt to asbestos.

Even so, the mayor doesn't want to get rid of salt
altogether. The New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene stipulates:
"A company selling three equally popular lines of crackers could
keep one type extra salty as long as its overall cracker
portfolio met the target for crackers, measured in milligrams of
sodium per 100 grams of cracker."

Ask yourself: Is this a sentence the government should
make?

Many people think so. The NSRI "will save tens of thousands
of lives each year," the health department
predicts. For public officials, there is always the
temptation to save people whose lives are not at risk.

That's the problem with this non-problem: There's no
conclusive proof that salt is bad for you, or that eating less of
it is good for you. In 1988, a massive intrapopulation study
involving 7,300 Scottish men showed that sodium had no effect on
blood pressure. A 10-year follow-up to the Scottish Heart Health
Survey found no connection between salt intake and health
outcomes, suggesting that salt is irrelevant to the Grim
Reaper.

Scots, despite 13th-century English accusations to the
contrary, are no different than other humans. Italians consume
almost 11 grams of salt per day, and yet they rank among the
world's best in cardiovascular health. In 1999, an analysis of
the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial database, 14 years in
the making, revealed there to be "no relationship observed
between dietary sodium and mortality."

There is, however, evidence
that salt acts as an antidepressant, which would explain why
couch potatoes are so happy sitting around and eating
Doritos.

The science of salt is far from settled. Norman K.
Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School believes
"the influence of salt intake is too inconsistent and generally
too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level."
Finding "the association of sodium intake to health outcomes" to
be "modest and inconsistent," Michael H. Alderman, a hypertension
expert at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, concluded:
"[N]o single universal dietary recommendation can be
scientifically justified."

But it can be politically justified.

The Bloomberg administration is presenting its salt
reductions as an expansion of consumer choice. Its health
commissioner, Thomas Farley,
says: "If they want more salt, they can put it on. They can't
take salt out of the food they buy." As logical as this sounds,
it still doesn't make salt the government's business. Insofar as
restrictions expand freedom of choice, the motto might as well
be: "We Choose, You Decide."

Many companies, it is important to note, have already
jumped on the low-sodium blandwagon. Campbell Soup Company has
cut the sodium in its soups by half since the 1980s. In that same
decade, Kellogg released low-sodium versions of Corn Flakes and
Rice Krispies, which were such a hit that they were dropped four
years later.

"Once you start saying you've taken salt down, it's
basically equal to, 'It's not going to taste good,'"
said Douglas Balentine, director of nutrition and health for
Unilever NV.

Taste, needless to say, is important when deciding what to
eat. A few years ago, Paul Eastham, a Daily Telegraph
correspondent, reported that his 14-year-old daughter had stopped
eating vegetables after saltshakers were banned from her school
lunchroom. For many people, salt makes healthy food bearable.
Yes, they can still add it onto their zucchini, but foods lose
their appeal the more adjustments they require. To this extent,
salt reduction may mean vegetable reduction.

Politicians who disregard unintended consequences do so at
other people's risk. Pregnant women were once told to limit
weight gain during pregnancy. However, as a study in the journal
Hypertension noted,
"limiting weight gain in pregnancy increased fetal morbidity and
mortality rates. Women are no longer advised to limit weight gain
in pregnancy."

Public health, which hinges on politicized science, is a
matter of many lives and many potential deaths, and lives are not
saved when personal commandments are made political
commands.

Bloomberg, a mayor for whom the political is personal,
hates salt -- except when he uses it. Not only does he salt
pizza, but he likes his popcorn "so salty that it burns others'
lips," as the New York Times put
it. He even salts saltine crackers. When you salt salt, the issue
is yours and not society's.

One wonders if Bloomberg's salt fetish is related, in some
oblique way, to his nationwide salt reductions. If everyone
consumes less salt, the mayor will have plenty of hands to hold
as he confronts his salt gluttony. Or maybe he just wants to make
sure there is enough salt to supply his heavy doses. The
implausibility of this scenario does not invalidate the principle
underlying it: In the Big Apple, the buck starts where it
ostensibly stops.

For Bloomberg, deprivation begins in the public square and
ends at home. Luckily for him, the government's kitchen is his
castle, and he doesn't have to stomach his own recipes
alone.