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releases 15/11/2004 Health White Paper: SMA hits out at weak science The Salt Manufacturers' Association today (Monday 15 November) gave its verdict on the Health White Paper as previewed by the media over the weekend. General secretary, Peter Sherratt, commented as follows: "We wholly support the principle of giving the public the information and advice they need to make informed choices about their health but it is vital that such information is based on sound science. The science being employed by the government on the salt issue is based on weak and contested evidence from the Food Standards Agency. It is poor and unbalanced and the there are many experts in the UK and world-wide who fundamentally disagree with the stance being taken. "Salt is being progressively criminalised when, in reality, we require at least a cupful of it working in our bodies to keep us alive. Blanket advice on salt reduction carries with it real dangers for the elderly in particular, who can suffer from acute sodium deficiency (see note 5 below). We fail to understand why, when it has spent £4 million on a slippery slug campaign, the Food Standards Agency has not devoted the fraction of that which would be needed to commission conclusive research and a risk assessment." "The government's position on salt is another example of a quick political fix built around spin rather than substance." Notes to editors 1 The Department of Health's own National Diet and Nutrition Survey, published earlier this year, concluded that there is no significant effect on the blood pressure of healthy people from eating salt. 2 The 1988 Intersalt study is one of the prime motivators for the current campaign, yet it failed to prove its own primary hypothesis that systolic blood pressure is associated directly with sodium excretion. 3 Several large-scale intervention studies have shown that restriction of sodium in the diet has no effect on diastolic blood pressure and only a minimal effect on systolic blood pressure. 4 The National Health Service's own website includes an evaluation of the evidence base for reduction of salt in the diet which concludes that the calculations are "theoretical" and that the authors have "over-emphasised" a key section. The reviewers suggest that further research is needed. 5 In September 2004 Professor Ingo Füsgen from the Department of Geriatrics at the University of Witten-Herdecke in Germany told the European Geriatrics Congress that a low salt diet can be extremely dangerous for elderly. His research shows that the symptoms of hyponatraemia (low sodium level in the blood), which are tiredness, difficulty in concentrating and loss of balance, can develop into confusion and even coma if left untreated. His studies show that up to 10 per cent of older people suffer from sub-acute sodium deficiency, which can result in problems such as nervous disposition, hallucinations, muscle cramps and incontinence. 6 Further detail on the Salt Manufacturers' Association position on salt and health its available from www.saltsense.co.uk
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