Senator Boxer Joins Groups Urging Labeling Changes for Poultry
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has reportedly joined the California Poultry Federation (CPF) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reform labeling requirements for sodium-enhanced chicken. “Unfortunately, since 2003, chicken injected with sodium additives has been allowed to be misleadingly labeled as ‘100 percent all-natural,’” Boxer apparently stated at a February 24, 2010, press conference. “In these difficult times, our families should not have to pay $2 billion for saltwater that they don’t know about, they don’t want and they certainly don’t need.”
Known as “plumping,” this practice purportedly involves injecting “saltwater, chicken stock, seaweed extract or some combination thereof into chicken to increase its weight and price, while simultaneously increasing sodium content by up to 700 [percent],” according to one CPF member’s internet campaign. Although USDA already requires poultry containing these ingredients to carry warning labels at least one fourth the size of the product name, CPF and its allies have asked the department to prohibit the use of “all-natural” marketing claims on enhanced chicken. Adding saltwater to poultry “is basically a hidden tax of up to 15 percent,” CSPI has alleged, further asserting that salt “is probably the most harmful ingredient in the food supply” and “a major promoter of high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and other ailments.” See Congress Daily, CPF Press Release, CSPI Press Release, Meatingplace.com, and The Associated Press, February 24, 2010.
In making these claims, CSPI cites a February 22, 2010, report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that blames increasing rates of high blood pressure for “more than one-third of heart attacks and almost half of heart failures in the United States each year.” Titled “A Population-Based Policy and Systems Change Approach to Prevent and Control Hypertension,” the report urges public health officials to adopt policies aimed at reducing sodium consumption and increasing physical activity. As a concurrent IOM press release states, “The committee’s review of the science points to heavy weight, inactivity, and unhealthy diets containing too much salt and too little potassium as the major risk factors for high blood pressure.” In particular, IOM has noted that “hypertension prevalence might be reduced by as much as 22 percent if Americans consumed less salt in their diet and ate more vegetables, fruit, and lean protein.” The institute has advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to work with partners in the public and private sectors to promote policies that make it easier for people to engage in regular physical activity, cut calories, and reduce their intake of foods containing high levels of sodium while increasing their exposure and access to produce and other foods containing potassium.”
Meanwhile, New York Times columnist John Tierney has questioned the research and statistics often cited by public health experts and policy makers to support reducing salt consumption. Titled “When It Comes to Salt, No Right or Wrongs. Yet.,” his February 23, 2010, article registers a dearth of reliable evidence in the salt debate. “For all the talk about the growing menace of sodium in packaged foods, experts aren’t even sure that Americans today are eating more salt than they used to,” writes Tierney.
He also argues that previous public health campaigns have sometimes resulted in unintended consequences, causing experts to concede, for example, that “their anti-fat advice may have contributed to diabetes and obesity by unintentionally encouraging Americans to eat more calories.” Tierney points to recent research conducted by the University of California, Davis, and Washington University in St. Louis that “analyzed 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed the same amount of salt,” with the vast majority eating “more salt than recommended in the current American dietary guidelines.” According to Tierney, the study authors have hypothesized “that networks in the brain regulate sodium appetite so that people consume a set daily level of salt.” They fear that “if future policies reduce the average amount of salt in food, people might compensate by seeking out saltier foods—or by simply eating still more of everything.”
In a related development, a small study has reportedly claimed that increased salt intake could contribute to hardening of the arteries. Alwyn Todd, et al., “Dietary salt loading impairs arterial vascular reactivity,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2010. Australian and U.S. researchers followed 35 hypertensive participants for four weeks, assigning the volunteers to supplement their low-salt diets with sodium-free tomato juice, tomato juice containing 90 millimoles (mmol) sodium or tomato juice containing 140 mmol sodium. The results apparently showed that “dietary salt loading produced significant increases in [pulsewave velocity] and [systolic blood pressure],” indicators of artery stiffness and vascular health.
